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The History of Rasselas, 


PRINCE OP ABYSSINIA. 


A TALE. 

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VICE VERSA; 

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Copyright 1882, by The John W. Lovell Company. 



Volume 2, No. 40. Oct. 19,1882 Issued Weekly. Annual Subscription, 52 Numbers, $8.00. 


THE HISTORY OF RASSELAS, 

PRINCE OF ABYSSINIA. 


CHAPTER I. 

DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY. 

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and 
pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope ; who expect 
that age will perform the promises of youth, and that 
deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the 
morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of 
Abyssinia. 

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperor, in 
whose dominions the Father of. Waters begins his course; 
whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters 
over half the world the harvests of Egypt. 

According to the custom which has descended from age to 
age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was 
confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters 
of AbyssiniAn royalty, till the order of succession should call 
him to the throne. 

The place, which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had 
destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes, was a 
spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on 
every side by mountains,' of which the summits overhang the 


8 


XASSELAS. 


middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered 
was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has long 
been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human 
industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick 
wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed 
with gates of iron forged -by artificers of ancient days, so 
massy that no man could without the help of engines open or 
shut them. 

From the mountains on every side, rivulets descended that 
filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a 
lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and 
frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the 
wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a 
stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the 
northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to 
precipice till it was heard no more. 

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the 
banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every 
blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped 
fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass or 
browse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this 
extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the moun- 
tains which confined them. On one part were flocks and 
herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of 
chase frisking in the lawns ; the sprightly kid was bounding 
on rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the 
solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of 
the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were 
collected, and its evils extracted and excluded. 

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with 
the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were 
added at the annual visit which the emperor paid his children, 
when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music ; and 
during eight days every one that resided in the valley was 
required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclu- 
sion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen 
the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately 
granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden 
the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, 
and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in 
hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity ; 
to which those only were admitted whose performance was 
thought able to add novelty to luxury. Such was the appear- 
ance of security and delight, which this retirement afforded, 


J? A SSL' LAS. 


9 


that they, to whom it was new, always desired that it might 
be perpetual ; and as those, on whom the iron gate had once 
closed, were never suffered to return, the effect of longer 
experience could not be known. Thus every year produced 
new schemes of delight, and new competitors for imprison- 
ment. 

The palace stood on an eminence raised about thirty paces 
above the surface of the lake. It was divided into many 
squares or courts, built with greater or less magnificence, 
according to the rank of those for whom they were designed. 
The roofs were turned into arches of massy stone, joined by 
a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood 
from century to century deriding the solstitial rains and 
equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation. 

This house, which was so large as to be fully known to 
none but some ancient officers who successively inherited the 
secrets of the place, was built as if suspicion herself had 
dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and 
secret passage, every square had a communication with the 
rest, either from the upper storys by private galleries, or by 
subterranean passages from the lower apartments. Many of 
the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of 
monarchs had deposited their treasures. They then closed 
up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed 
but in the utmost exigences of the kingdom ; and recorded 
their accumulations in a book, which was itself concealed in 
a tower not entered but by the emperor attended by the 
prince who stood next in succession. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE DISCONTENT OF RASSELAS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY. 

Here the sons and daughters of Abyssinia lived only to 
know the soft vicissitude of pleasure and repose, and attended 
by all that were skilful to delight, and gratified with whatever 
the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, 
and slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was prac- 
ticed to make them pleased with their own condition. The 
sages who instructed them told them of nothing but the 
miseries of public life, and described all beyond the mountains 
as regions of calamity, where discord was always raging, and 
and where man preyed upon man. 


10 


RASSELAS . 


To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were 
daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the 
happy valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enu- 
merations of different enjoyments ; and revelry and merri- 
ment was the business of every hour from the dawn of morn- 
ing to the close of even. 

These methods were generally successful : few of the 
princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed 
their lives in full conviction that they had all within their 
reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom 
fate had excluded from this seat of tranquillity as the sport 
of chance and the slaves of misery. 

Thus they rose in the morning and lay down at night, 
pleased with each other and with themselves ; all but Ras- 
selas, who in the twenty-sixth year of his age began to with- 
draw himself from their pastimes and assemblies, and to 
delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often sat 
before tables covered with luxury, and forgot to taste the 
dainties that were placed befor him ; he rose abruptly in the 
midst of the song and hastily retired beyond the sound of 
music. His attendants observed the change and endeavored 
to renew his love of pleasure ; he neglected their officiousness, 
and repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on 
the banks of rivulets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes 
listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the 
fish playing in the stream, and anon cast his eyes upon the 
pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some 
were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the 
bushes. 

This singularity of his humor made him much observed. 

One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly 
delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the 
cause of his disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one 
was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the 
goats, that were browsing among the rocks, began to compare 
their condition with his own. 

“ What,” said he, “ makes the difference between man and 
all the rest of the animal creation ? Every beast that strays 
beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself ; he 
is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the 
stream, his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and \ 
sleeps ; he rises again and is hungry, he is again fed and is at 
rest. I am hungry and thirsty like him, but when thirst and 
hunger cease I am not at rest ; I am, like him, pained with 


A’ASSZlLAS. 


1 1 

want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The inter- 
mediate hours are tedious and gloomy ; I long again to be 
hungry, that I may again quicken my attention. The birds 
pick the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves, where 
they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste 
their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I like- 
wise can call the lutanist and the- singer, but the sounds that 
pleased me yesterday weary me to-day, and will grow yet 
more wearisome to-morrow. I can discover within me no 
power of perception which is not glutted with its proper 
pleasure, yet* I do not feel myself delighted. Man surely has 
some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification ; 
or he has some desires, distinct from sense, which must be 
satisfied before he can be happy.” 

After this he lifted up his head, and, seeing the moon rising 
walked towards the palace. As he passed through the fields, 
and saw the animals around him, “Ye,” said he, “ are happy, 
and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burdened 
with myself ; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity ; 
for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from 
which ye are free : I fear pain when I do not feel it ; I some- 
times shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils 
anticipated. Surely the equity of Providence has balanced 
peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.” 

With observations like these the prince amused himself as 
he returned ; uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a 
look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own 
perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of 
life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and 
the eloquence with which he bewailed them. He mingled 
cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to 
find that his heart was lightened. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE WANTS OF HIM THAT WANTS NOTHING. 

On the next day his old instructor, imagining that he had 
now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was 
in hope of curing it by counsel, and officiously sought an 
opportunity of conference ; which the prince having long 
considered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was 
not very willing to afford : “ Why,” said he, “ does this man 


12 


XASSELAS. 


thus intrude upon me ; shall I be never suffered to forget 
those lectures which pleased only while they were new, and 
to become new again must be forgotten ? ” He then walked 
into the wood, and composed himself to his usual meditations ; 
when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he per- 
ceived his pursuer at his side, and was at first prompted by 
his impatience to go hastily away ; but being unwilling to 
offend a man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, 
he invited him to sit down with him on the bank. 

The old man, thus encourged, began to lament the change 
which had been lately observed in the prince, and to inquire 
why he so often retired from the pleasures of the palace, to 
loneliness and silence ? “I fly frcm pleasures,” said the 
prince, “ because pleasure has ceased to please ; I am lonely 
because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my 
presence the happiness of others.” “You, sir,” said the 
sage, “ are the first who has complained of misery in the 
happy valley. I hope to convince you that your complaints 
have no real cause. You are here in full possession of all 
that the emperor of Abyssinia can bestow ; here is neither labor 
to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that 
labor or danger can procure or purchase. Look round and 
tell me which of your wants is without supply ; if you want 
nothing how are you unhappy ? ” 

“ That I want nothing,” said the prince, “ nor that I know 
not what I want, is the cause of my complaint. If I had any 
known want, I should have a certain wish ; that wish would 
excite endeavor, and I should not then repine to see the sun 
move so slowly towards the western mountain, or lament 
when the day breaks, and sleep will no longer hide me from 
myself. When I see the kids and lambs chasing one another, 
I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue. 
But, possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one 
hour exactly like another, except that the latter is still more 
tedious than the former. Let your experience inform me how 
the day may seem as short as in my childhood, while nature 
was yet fresh, and every moment showed me what I never 
had observed before. I have already enjoyed too much ; 
give me something to desire.” 

The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction, 
and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. 
“ Sir,” said he, “ if you had seen the miseries of the world, 
you would know how to value your present state.” “ Now ” 
said the prince, “ you have given me something to desire ; I 


RASSELAS. 


T 3 

shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of 
them is necessary to happiness.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRINCE CONTINUES TO GRIEVE AND MUSE. 

At this time the sound of music proclaimed the hour of 
repast, and the conversation was concluded. The old man 
went away sufficiently discontented, to find that his reason- 
ings had produced the only conclusion which they were intend- 
ed to prevent. But in the decline of life shame and grief are 
of short duration ; whether it be that w^e bear easily what we 
have borne long ; or that, finding ourselves in age less regard- 
ed, we less regard others ; or, that we look with slight regard 
upon afflictions to which we know that the hand of death is 
about to put an end. 

The prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, 
could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before 
terrified at the length of life which nature promised him, be- 
cause he considered that in a long time much must be endured ; 
he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years much 
might be done. 

This first beam of hope, that had been ever darted, into his 
mind, rekindled youth in his cheeks, and doubled the lustre 
of his eyes. He was fired with the desire of doing something, 
though he knew not yet with distinctness either end or means. 

He was now no longer gloomy and unsocial ; but, consider- 
ing himself as master of a secret stock of happiness, which he 
could enjoy only by concealing it, he affected to be busy in all 
schemes of diversion, and endeavored to make others pleased 
with the state of which he himself was weary. But pleasures 
never can be so multiplied or continued as not to leave much 
of life unemployed ; there were many hours, both of the night 
and day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary 
thought. The load of life was much lightened ; he went 
eagerly into the assemblies, because he supposed the frequency 
of his presence necessary to the success of his purposes ; he 
retired gladly to privacy, because he had now a subject of 
thought. 

His chief amusement was to picture to himself that world 
which he had never seen ; to place himself in various condi- 


14 


RASSELAS. 


tions ; to be entangled in imaginary difficulties, and to be en- 
gaged in wild adventure? ; but his benevolence always termin- 
ated his projects in the relief of distress, the detection of 
fraud, the defeat of oppression, and the diffusion of happiness. 

Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He 
busied himself so intensely in visionary bustle that he forgot 
his real solitude ; and, amidst hourly preparations for the var- 
ious incidents of human affairs, neglected to consider by what 
means he should mingle with mankind. 

One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself 
an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion by a treacherous 
lover, and crying after him for restitution and redress. So 
strongly was the image impressed upon his mind that he started 
up in the maid’s defence, and ran forward to seize the plun- 
derer, with all the eagerness of real pursuit. Fear naturally 
quickens the flight of guilt. Rasselas -could not catch the 
fugitive with his utmost efforts ; but, resolving to wear} 7- , by 
perseverance, him whom he could not surpass in speed, he 
pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his course. 

Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless 
impetuosity. Then, raising his eyes to the mountain, “ This,” 
said he, “ is the fatal obstacle that hinders at once the enjoy- 
ment of pleasure, and the exercise of virtue. How long is it 
that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of 
my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount ! ” 

Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse ; and re- 
member,. that since he first resolved to escape from his con- 
finement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual 
course. He now felt a degree of regret with which he had 
never been before acquainted. He considered how much 
might have been done in the time which had passed, and left 
nothing real behind it. He compared twenty months with the 
life of man. “ In life,” said he, “ is not to be counted the 
ignorance of infancy, or imbecility of age. We are long be- 
fore we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power 
of acting. The true period of human existence may be reason- 
ably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away 
the four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, 
for I have certainly possessed it ; but of twenty months to 
come who can assure me ? ” 

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and 
he was long before he could be reconciled to himself. “ The 
rest of my time,” said he, “ has been lost by the crime or folly 
of my ancestors and the absurd institution of my country ; I 


KASSEL AS. 


x 5 


remember it with disgust, yet without remorse : but the months 
that have passed since new light darted into my soul, since I 
formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squandered 
by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be restor- 
ed ; I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an 
idle'gazer on the light of heaven i in this time the birds have 
left the nest of their mother, and committed themselves to 
the woods and to the skies : the kid has forsaken the teat, 
and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest of in- 
dependent sustenance. I only have made no advances, but 
am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by more than 
twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life ; the stream 
that rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity. I sat 
feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the ex- 
amples of the earth, of the instructions of the planets. 
Twenty months are passed, who shall restore them ? ” 

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind ; he 
passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle 
resolves ; and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by 
hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark, 
that what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted. 

This was obvious ; and Rasselas reproached himself that 
he had not discovered it, having not knoAvn or not considered 
how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often 
the mind, hurried by her own ardor to distant views, neglects 
the truths that lie open before her. He, for a few hours, 
regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind 
upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE PRINCE MEDITATES HIS ESCAPE. 

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that 
which it was very easy to suppose effected. When he looked 
round about him, he saw himself confined by the bars of 
nature, which had never yet been broken, and by the gate, 
through which none that once had passed it were ever able 
to return. He was now impatient as an eagle in the grate. 
He passed week after week in clambering the mountains, to 
see if there was any aperture which the bushes might con- 
ceal, but found all the summits inaccessible by their prcmi- 


i6 


RASSELAS. 


nence. The iron gate he despaired to open ; for it was not 
only secured with all the powers of art, but was always 
watched by successive sentinels, and was by its position 
exposed to the perpetual observation of all the inhabitants. 

He then examined the cavern through which the waters of 
the lake were discharged ; and, looking down at a time when 
the sun shone strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be 
full of broken rocks, which, though they permitted the stream 
to flow through many narrow passages, would stop anybody 
of solid bulk. He returned discouraged and dejected ; but, 
having now known the blessing of hope, resolved never to 
despair. 

In these fruitless searches he spent ten months. The 
time, however, passed cheerfully away : in the morning he 
rose with new hope, in the evening applauded his own dili- 
gence, and in the night slept sound after his fatigue. He 
met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labor and 
diversified his thoughts. He discerned the various instincts* 
of animals and properties of plants, and found the place 
replete with wonders, of which he purposed to solace him- 
self with the contemplation, if he should never be able to 
accomplish his flight ; rejoicing that his endeavors, though 
yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source of inex- 
haustible inquiry. 

But his original curiosity was not yet abated ; he resolved 
to obtain some knowledge of the ways of men. His wish 
still continued, but his hope grew less. He ceased to survey 
any longer the walls of his prison, and spared to search by 
new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found, yet 
determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold 
on any expedient that time should offer. 


CHAPTER VI. 

A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING. 

Among the artists that had been allured into the happy 
valley, to labor for the accommodation and pleasure of its 
inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowledge of the 
mechanic powers, who had contrived many engines both of 
use and recreation. By a wheel which the stream turned he 
forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all 
the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavilion in the 


RASSELAS. 


»7 


garden, around which he kept the air always cool by artificial 
showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was 
ventilated by fans, to which the rivulet that ran through it 
gave a constant motion ; the instruments of soft music were 
placed at proper distances, of which seme played by the 
impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the stream. 

This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who was 
pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining that the 
time would come when all his acquisitions should be of use 
to him in the open world. He came one day to amuse himself 
in his usual manner, and found the master busy in building a 
sailing chariot : he saw that the design was practicable upon 
a level surface, and with expressions of great esteem solicited 
its completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so 
much regarded by the prince, and resolved to gain yet higher 
honors. “ Sir,” said he, “you have seen but a small part of 
what the mechanic sciences can perform. I have been long 
of opinion, that, instead of the lardy conveyance of ships and 
chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings ; that 
the fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only ignor- 
ance and idleness need crawl upon the ground.” 

This hint rekindled the prince’s desire of passing the 
mountains : having seen what the mechanist had already per- 
formed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more ; yet 
resolved to inquire further, before he suffered hope to afflict 
him by disappointment. “ I am afraid,” said he to the artist, 
“ that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that 
you now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. 
Every animal has his element assigned him ; the birds have 
the air, and man and beasts the earth.” “ So,” replied the 
mechanist, fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can 
swim by nature, and men by art. He that can swim needs 
not despair to fly ; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to 
fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our 
power of resistance to the different density of matter through 
which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by 
the air, if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the 
air can recede from the pressure.” 

“ But the exercise of swimming,” said the prince, is “ very 
laborious ; the strongest limbs are soon wearied ; I am afraid 
the act of flying will be yet more violent ; and wings will be 
of no great use unless we can fly further than we can swim.” 

“ The labor of rising from the ground,” said the artist, 
“ will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestic fowls, but 


is 


KASSELAS. 


as we mount higher, the earth’s attraction and the body’s 
gravity will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a 
region where the man will float in the air without any tendency 
to fall ; no care will then be necessary but to move forwards, 
which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, sir, whose 
curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleas- 
ure a philosopher, furnished with wings, and hovering in the 
sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabitants, rolling 
beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its 
diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. 
How must it amuse the pendent spectators to see the moving 
scene of land and ocean, cities and deserts ! To survey with 
equal serenity the marts of trade and the fields of battles ; 
mountains infested by barbarians, and fruitful regions glad- 
dened by plenty and lulled by peace ! How easily shall we 
then trace the Nile through all hU passage ; pass over to 
distant regions, and examine the face of nature from one ex- 
tremity to the other ! ” 

“ All this,” said the prince, “ is much to be desired ; but I 
am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions 
of speculation and tranquillity. I have been told that respira- 
tion is difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, 
though so high as to produce great tenuity of air, it is very 
easy to fall : therefore I suspect, that, from any height where 
life can be supported, there may be danger of too quick 
descent.” 

“ Nothing,” replied the artist, “ will ever be attempted, if 
all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will 
favor my project,, I will try the first flight at my own hazard. 
I have considered the structure of all volant animals, and find 
the folding continuity of the bat’s wings most easily accommo- 
dated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my 
task tomorrow and in a year expect to tower in the air beyond 
the malice and pursuit of man. But I will work only on this 
condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you 
shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves.” 

“ Why,” said Rasselas, “ should you envy others so great 
an advantage ? All skill ought to be exerted for universal 
good ; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay 
the kindness that he has received.” 

“ If men were all virtuous,” returned the artist, “ I should 
with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be 
the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade 
them from the sky ? Against an army sailing through the 


ZCASSELAS. 19 

clouds, neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas could afford 
any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in 
tlie wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the 
capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. 
Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of 
happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some 
of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the south- 
ern sea.” 

The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the perform- 
ance, not wholly hopeless of success. He visited the work 
from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked many 
ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion, and unite levity 
with strength. The artist was every day more certain that he 
should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion 
-of his confidence seized upon the prince. 

In a year the wings were finished ; and, on a morning ap- 
pointed, the maker appeared furnished for flight on a little 
promontory : he waved his pinions awhile to gather air, then 
leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the 
lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained 
him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead 
with terror and vexation. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE PRINCE FINDS A MAN OF LEARNING. 

The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having 
suffered himself to hope for a happier event, only because 
he had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted 
in his design to leave the happy valley by the first opportu- 
nity. 

His imagination was now at a stand ; he had no prospect 
of entering into the world ; and, notwithstanding all his en- 
deavors to support himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon 
him, and he began again to lose his thoughts in sadness, when 
the rainy season, which in these countries is periodical, made 
it inconvenient to wander in the woods. 

The rain continued longer and with more violence than had 
ever been known ; the clouds broke on the surrounding moun- 
tains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every side, 
till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water. The 
lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the valley was 


20 


ft ASS E LAS. 


covered with the inundation. The eminence on which the 
palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were 
all that the eye could now discover. The herds and flocks 
left the pastures, and both the wild and the tame retreated to 
the mountains. 

This inundation confined all the princes to domestic amuse- 
ments, and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized 
by a poem, which Imiac rehearsed upon the various conditions 
of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him in 
his apartment, and recite his verses a second time ; then 
entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in having 
found a man who knew the world so well, and could so skilP' 
fully paints the scenes of life. He asked a thousan^-qties- 
tions about things, to which, though common tq^-all other 
mortals, his confinement from childhood hajT'kept him a 
stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance add loved his curi- 
osity, and entertained him from day to day with novelty and 
instruction, so that the prince regretted the necessity of sleep, 
and longed till the morning should renew his pleasure. 

As they were sitting together the prince commanded Imiac 
to relate his history, and tell him by what accident he was 
forced, or by what motive induced, to close his life in the 
happy valley. As he was going to begin the narrative, Ras- 
selas was called to a concert, and obliged to restrain his cu- 
riosity till the evening. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE HISTORY OF IMLAC. 

The close of day is, in the regions of the torrid zone, the 
only season of diversion and entertainment, and it was there- 
fore midnight before the music ceased, and the prince? re- 
tired. Rasselas then called for his companion and required 
him to begin the story of his life. 

“ Sir,” said Imiac, “ my history will not be long : the life 
that is devoted to knowledge passes silently away, and is very 
little diversified by events. To talk in public, to think in sol- 
itude, to read and to hear, to inquire and answer inquiries, is 
the business of a scholar. He wanders about the woidd with- 
out pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued but by 
men like himself. 


A’ASSELAS. 


21 


“ I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great dis- 
tance from the fountain of the Nile. My father was a 
wealthy merchant, who traded between the inland countries 
of Africa and the ports of the Red Sea. He was honest, 
frugal, and diligent, but of mean sentiments and narrow com-' 
prehension : he desired only to be rich, and to conceal his 
riches, lest he should be spoiled by the governors of the prov- 
ince.” 

“ Surely,” said the prince, “ my father must be negligent of 
his charge, if any man in his dominions dares take that which 
belongs to another. Does he not know that kings are ac- 
countable for injustice permitted as well as done ? If I were 
emperor, not the meanest of my subjects should be oppressed 
with impunity. My blood boils when I am told that a mer- 
chant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of losing them 
by the rapacity of power. Name the governor who robbed 
the people that I may declare his crimes to the emperor.” 

“ Sir,” said Imlac, “your ardor is the natural effect of vir- 
tue animated by youth : the time will come when you will 
acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less impatience of 
the governor. Oppression is, in the Abyssinian dominions, 
neither frequent nor tolerated : but no form of government 
has yet been discovered, by which cruelty can be wholly pre- 
vented. Subordination suppresses power on the one part, 
and subjection on the other, and if power be in the hands of 
men, it will sometimes be abused. The vigilance of the su- 
preme magistrate may do much, but will still remain undone. 
He can never know all the crimes that are commited, and 
can seldom punish all that he knows.” 

“This,” said the prince, “ I do not understand, but I had 
rather heat .thee than dispute. Continue thy narration.” 

“ My father,” proceeded Imlac, “ originally intended that I 
should have no other education than such as might qualify 
me for commerce ; and, discovering in me great strength of 
memory and quickness of apprehension, often declared 
his hope that 1 should sometime be the richest man in Abys- 
sinia.” 

“ Why,” said the prince, “ did thy father desire the in- 
crease of his wealth, when it was already greater than he durst 
discover or enjoy ? I am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet 
inconsistencies cannot both be true.” 

“ Inconsistencies,” answered Imlac, “ cannot both be right ; 
but, imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is 
not inconsistency. My father might expect a time of greater 


RASSELAS. 


security. However, some desire is necessary to keep life ii? 
motion ; and he whose real wants are supplied must admit 
those of fancy.” 

“ This,” said the prince, “ I can in some measure conceive. 
I repent that I interrupted thee.” 

“ With this hope,” proceeded Imlac, “ he sent me to school ; 
but when I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt 
the pleasure of intelligence and the pride of invention, I be- 
gan silently to despise riches, and determined to disappoint 
the purpose of my father, whose grossness of conception 
raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his tenderness 
would expose me to the fatigue of travel, in which time I had 
been instructed, by successive masters, in all the literature of 
my native country. As every hour taught me something new, 
I lived in a continual course of gratifications ; but as I ad- 
vanced toward manhood, I lost much of the reverence with 
which I had been used to look on my instructors : because, 
when the lessons were ended, I did not find them wiser or 
better than common men. 

“ At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce : 
and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out 
ten thousand pieces of gold. ‘ This, young man,’ said he, 

‘ is the stock with which you must negotiate. I began with 
less than the fifth part, and you see how diligence and par- 
simony have increased it. This is your own to waste or to 
improve. If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you 
must wait for death before you be rich ; if, in four years, you 
double your stock, we will thenceforward let subordination 
cease, and live together as friends and partners ; for he shall 
jbe always equal with me who is equally skilled in the art of 
growing rich.” 

■■ We laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales of 
cheap goods, and traveled to the shore of the Red Sea. When 
I cast njy eye upon the expanse of waters, my heart bounded 
like that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an unextinguishable 
curiosity kindle in my ntind, and resolved to snatch this oppor- 
tunity of seeing the manners of our nations, and of learning 
science unknown in Abyssinia. 

“ I remember that my father had obliged me to improve- 
ment of my stock, not by a promise which I ought not to 
violate, but by a penalty which I was at liberty to incur ; and 
therefore determined to gratify my predominant desire, and, 
by drinking at the fountain of knowledge, to quench the thirst 
of curiosity. 


RASSELAS. 


“ As I was supposed to trade without connection with my 
father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the 
master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other country. 
I had a motive of choice to regulate my voyage : it was suffi- 
cient for me that, wherever I wandered, I should see a coun- 
try which I had not seen before. I therefore entered a ship 
bound for Surat, having left a letter for my father declaring 
my intention.” 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE HISTORY OF IMLAC CONTINUED. 

“ When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost 
sight of land, I looked round about me with pleasing terror, 
and, thinking my soul enlarged by the boundless prospects, 
imagined that I could gaze round without satiety, but, in a 
short time, I grew weary of looking on barren uniformity, 
where I could only see again what I had already seen. I then 
descended into the ship, and doubted for a while whether all 
my future pleasures would not end like this, in disgust and dis- 
appointment. Yet, surely, said I, the ocean and the land are 
very different ; the only variety of water is rest and motion, 
but the earth has mountains and valleys, deserts and cities : it 
is inhabited by men of different customs and contrary opinions ; 
and I may hope to find variety in life though I should miss it 
in nature. 

“ With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself 
during the voyage, sometimes by learning from the sailors the 
art of navigation, which I have never practiced, and some- 
times by forming schemes for my conduct in different situa- 
tions, in not one of which I have been ever placed. 

“ I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we 
landed safely at Surat. I secured my money, and purchasing 
some commodities for show, joined myself to a caravan that 
was passing into the inland country. My companions, for 
some reason or other, conjecturing that I was rich, and, by my 
inquiries and admiration, finding that I was ignorant, consid- 
ered me as a novice whom they had a right to cheat, and who 
was to learn at the usual expense the art of fraud. They ex- 
posed me to the theft of servants and the exaction of officers, 
and saw me plundered upon false pretences, without any ad- 


-4 


RASSELAS, 


vantage to themselves, but that of rejoicing in the superiority 
of their own knowledge.” 

“ Stop a moment,” said the prince. “ Is there such de- 
pravity in man as that he should injure another without ben- 
efit to himself ? I can easily conceive that all are pleased 
without superiority ; but your ignorance was merely accidental, 
which, being neither your crime nor your folly, could afford 
them no reason to applaud themselves : and the knowledge 
which they had, and which you wanted, they might as effect- 
ually have shown by warning as betraying you.” 

“ Pride,” said Imlac, “ is seldom delicate, it will please it- 
self with very mean advantages ; and envy feels not its own 
happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of 
others. They were my enemies, because they grieved to think 
me rich : and my oppressors, because they delighted to find 
me weak.” 

“ Proceed,” said the prince ; “ I doubt not of the facts 
which you relate, but imagine that you impute them to mis- 
taken motives.” 

“ In this company,” said Imlac, “ I arrived at Arga, the 
capital of Indostan, the city in which the Great Mogul com- 
monly resides. I applied myself to the language of the coun- 
try, and in a few months was able to converse with the learned 
men ; some of whom I found morose and reserved, and others 
easy and communicative ; some were unwilling to teach an- 
other what they had with difficulty learned themselves ; and 
some showed that the end of their studies was to gain the 
dignity of instructing. 

“ To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself 
so much that I was presented to the emperor as a man of un- 
common knowledge. The emperor asked me many questions 
concerning my country and my travels ; and though I cannot 
now recollect anything that he uttered above the power of a 
common man, he dismissed me astonished at his wisdom, and 
enamored of his* goodness. 

“ My credit was now so high that the merchants, with whom 
I traveled, applied to me for recommendations to the ladies 
of the court. I was surprised at their confidence of solicita- 
tion, and gently reproached them with their practices on the 
road. They heard me with cold indifference, and showed no 
tokens of shame or sorrow. 

“ They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe : 
but what I would not do for kindness, I would not do for 
money ; and refused them, not because they had injured me, 


EASSELAS. z 5 

b 

but because I would not enable them to injure others ; for I 
knew they would pave made use of my credit to cheat those 
who should buy their wares. 

“ Having resided at Agra till there was no more to be 
learned, [ travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of 
ancient magnificence, and observed many new accommoda- 
tions of life. The Persians are a nation eminently social, and 
their assemblies afforded me daily opportunities of remarking 
characters and manners, and of tracing human nature through 
all its variations. 

“ From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation 
at once pastoral and warlike ; who live without any settled 
habitation ; whose only wealth is their flocks and herds ; and 
who have yet carried on, through all ages,, an hereditary war 
with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their 
possessions.” 


CHAPTER X. 

IMLAC’S HISTORY CONTINUED. A DISSERTATION ON POETRY. 

“ Wherever I went, I found that poetry was considered as' 
the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration some- 
what approaching to that which man would pay to the 
Angelic nature. And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in 
almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered 
as the best ; whether it be that every other kind of knowl- 
edge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a 
gift conferred at once ; or that the first poetry of every 
nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit 
by consent, which it received by accident at first : or whether, 
as the province of poetry is to describe nature and passion, 
which are always the same, the first writers took possession 
of the most striking objects for description, and the most 
probable occurrances for fiction, and left nothing to those 
that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and 
new combinations of the same images. Whatever be the 
reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are 
in possession of nature, and their followers of art ; that the 
first excel in strength and invention, and the latter in 
elegance and refinement. 

“ I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fratern- 
ity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able 


26 


. JlASSELAS. 


to repeat by memory the volumes that are suspended in the 
mosque of Mecca. But I soon found that no man was great 
by imitation. My desire of excellence impelled me to trans- 
fer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my 
subject, and men to be my auditors ; I could never describe 
what I had not seen : I could not hope to move those with 
delight or terror, whose interests and opinions I did not 
understand. 

“ Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw everything with 
a-jiew purpose ; my sphere of attention was suddenly magni- 
fied ; no kind of knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged 
mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and 
pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of 
the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the 
rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wan- 
dered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched 
the changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can 
be useless. Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful 
must be familiar to his imagination ; he must be conversant 
with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of 
the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the 
earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his 
mind with inexhaustible variety ; for every idea is useful for 
the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth ; 
and he who knows most will have most power of diversifying 
his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions 
and unexpected instruction. 

“ All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to 
study ; and every country which I have surveyed has contrib- 
uted something to my poetical powers.” 

“ Imso wide a survey,” said the prince, “you must surely 
have left much unobserved. I have lived, till now, within 
the circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad 
without the sight of something which I had never beheld 
before or never heeded.” 

“ The business of a poet, ” said Imlac, “ is to examine, 
not the individual, but the species ; to remark general pro- 
perties and large appearances ; he does not number the 
streaks of the tulip or describe the different shades in the 
verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of 
nature such prominent and striking features as recall the 
original to every mind ; and must meglect the minuter 
discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another 


KASSELAS . 


27 


have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike 
obvious to vigilance and carelessness. 

“ But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a 
poet ; he must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of 
life. His character requires that he estimates the happiness 
and misery of every condition ; observe the power of all the 
passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of 
the human mind as they are modified by various institutions 
and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the 
sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude. 
He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or coun- 
try ; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted 
and invariable state ; he must disregard present laws and 
opinions, and rise to general and transcendental -truths, 
which will always be the same ; he must therefore content 
himself with the slow progress of his name ; contemn the 
applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the 

justice of prosperity. He must write as the interpreter of 

nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider him- 
self as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future 
generations ; as a being superior to time and place. 

“ His labor is not yet at an end ; he must know many 

languages and many sciences : and, that his style may be 

worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, famil- 
iarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of 
harmony. ' 


CHAPTER XI. 

IMLAC’S NARRATIVE CONTINUED. A HINT ON PILGRIMAGE. 

Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to 
aggrandize his own profession, when the prince cried out, 
“ Enough ! thou hast convinced me, that no human being can 
ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.” 

“ To be a poet,” said Imlack, “ is indeed very difficult.” 
“ So difficult,” returned the prince, “that I will at present hear 
no more of his labors. Tell me whither you went when you 
had seen Persia.” 

“ From Persia,” said the poet, “ I travelled through Syria, 
and for three years resided in Palestine, where I conversed 
with great numbers of the northern and western nations of 
Europe ; the nations which are now in possesion of all power 


RASSELAS. 


2S 

and all knowledge : whose armies are irresistible, and whose 
fleet command the remotest parts of the globe. When I com- 
pared these men with the natives of our own kingdom, and 
those that surround us, they appeared almost another order 
of beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for any- 
thing that may not be obtained : a thousand arts, of which we 
never heard, are continually laboring for their convenience 
and pleasure ; and whatever their own climate has denied 
them is supplied by their commerce.” 

“ By what means,” said the prince, “ are the Europeans 
thus powerful ; or why, since they can so easily visit Asia or 
Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiatics and Africans 
invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports, and give laws 
to their natural princes ? The same wind that carries them 
back would bring us thither.” 

“ They are more powerful, sir, than we,” answered Imlac, 
“ because they are wiser; knowledge will always predomi- 
nate over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But 
why their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what 
reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme 
Be'ing.” 

“ When,” said the prince with a sigh, “ shall I be able to 
visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of 
nations ? Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up 
the time with such representations as thou eanst give me. I 
am not ignorant of the motive that assembles such numbers in 
that place, and cannot but consider it as the centre of wisdom 
and piety, to which the best and wisest of every land must be 
continually resorting.” 

‘ There are some nations,” said Imlac, “that send few vis- 
itants to Palestine ; for many numerous and learned sects in 
Europe concur to censure pilgrimage as superstitious or 
deride it as ridiculous.” 

“ You know,” said the prince, “ how little my life has made 
me acquainted with diversity of opinions : it will be too long 
to hear the arguments on both sides ; you, that have con- 
sidered them, tell me the result.” 

“ Pilgrimage,” said Imlac, “like many other sects of piety, 
may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles 
upon which it is performed. Long journeys in search of 
truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is necessary to the 
regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. 
Change of place is no natural cause of the increase of piety, 
for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet, since 


XASSELAS. 


29 


men go every day to view the fields where great actions have 
been performed, and return with stronger impressions of the 
event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally dispose us to 
view that country whence our religion had its beginning : and 
1 believe no man surveys those awful scenes without some 
confirmation of holy resolutions. That the Supreme Being 
may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another 
is the dream of idle superstition ; but that some places may 
•operate upon our minds in an uncommon manner is an 
opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who sup- 
poses that his vices, may be more successfully combated in 
Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mistaken ; yet he may go 
thither without folly : he who thinks they will be more freely 
pardoned dishonors at once his reason and religion.” 

These,” said the prince, “ are European distinctions. I 
will consider them another time. What have you found to 
Be the effect of knowledge ? Are those nations happier than 
we ? ” 

“ There is so much infelicity,” said the poet, “ in the world, 
that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to 
estimate the comparative happiness of others. Knowledge, 
is certainly one of the means of pleasure as is confessed by 
the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its 
ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be 
produced : it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless 
and torpid for want of attraction ; and, without knowing why, 
we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. 
I am therefore inclined to conclude, that if nothing counteracts 
the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as 
our minds take a wider range. 

“ In enumerating the particular comforts of life, we -shall 
fmd many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They 
cure wounds and diseases with which we languish and perish. 
We suffer inclemencies of weather which they can obviate. 
They have engines for the despatch of many laborious works 
which we must perform by manual industry. There is such 
communication between distant places that one friend can 
hardly be said to be absent from another. Their policy 
removes all public conveniences ; they have roads cut through 
their mountains, and bridges laid upon their rivers. And, if 
we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more 
commodious, and their possessions are more secure.” 

“ They are surely happy,” said the prince, “ who have all 
those conveniences, of which I envy none so much as the 


3 o XASSELAS. 

facility with which separated friends interchange their 
thoughts.” 

“ The Europeans,” answered Imlac, “ are less unhappy 
than we, but they are not happy. Human life is everywhere 
a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be 
enjoyed.” 


CHAPTER XII . 

THE STORY OF IMLAC CONTINUED. 

“ I am not yet willing,” said the prince, “ to suppose that 
happiness is so parsimoniously distributed to mortals ; nor 
can believe but that, if I had the choice of life, I should be 
able to fill every day with pleasure. I would injure no man, 
and should provoke no resentment ; I would relieve every 
distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I 
would choose my friends among the wise and my wife among 
the virtuous ; and therefore should be in danger from 
treachery or unkindness. My children should, by my care, 
be learned and pious, and would repay 4o my age what their 
childhood had received. What would dare to molest him 
who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his 
bounty, or assisted by his power ? And why should not life 
glide quietly away in the soft reciprocation of protection and 
reverence ? All this may be done without the help of Euro- 
pean refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather 
specious than useful. Let us leave them, and pursue our 
journey.” 

“ From Palestine,” said Imlac, “I passed through many 
regions of Asia, in the more civilized kingdoms as a trader, 
among the barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim. At last 
I began to long for my native country, that I may repose, 
after my travels and fatigues, in the places where I had spent 
my earliest years, and gladden my old companions with the 
recital af my adventures. Often did I figure to myself those 
with whom I had sported away the gay hours of dawning life, 
sitting round me in its evening, wondering at my tales, and 
listening to my counsels. 

“ When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I 
considered every moment as wasted which did not bring me 
nearer to Abyssinia. I hastened into Egypt, and notwith- 
standing my impatience, was detained ten months in the con- 


KASSEL AS. 


31 


templation of its ancient magnificence, and in inquiries after 
the remains of its ancient learning. I found in Cairo a 
mixture of all nations ; some brought thither by the love of 
knowledge, some by the hope of gain, and many by the desire 
of living after their own manner without observation, and of 
lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes ; for in a city, popu- 
lous as Cairo, it is possible to obtain at the same time the 
gratifications of society and the secrecy of solitude. 

“ From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red 
Sea, passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from 
which I had departed twenty years before. Here I joined 
myself to a caravan, and re-entered my native country. 

“ I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen, and the con- 
gratulations of my friends, and was not without hope that my 
father, whatever value he had set upon riches, would own with 
gladness and pride a son who was able to add to the felicity 
and honor of the nation. But I was soon convinced that my 
thoughts were vain. My father had been dead fourteen years, 
having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were re- 
moved to some other provinces. Of my companions the 
greater part was in the grave; of the rest, some could with 
difficulty remember me, and some considered me as one cor- 
rupted by foreign manners. 

“ A man used to vicissitudes is net easily dejected. I for- 
got, after a time, my disappointment, and endeavored to recom- 
mend myself to the nobles of the kingdom ; they admitted 
me to their tables, heard my story, and dismissed me. I 
opened a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then resolved 
to sit down in the quiet of domestic life, and addressed a lady 
that was fond of my conversation, but rejected my suit because 
my father was a merchant. 

“ Wearied at last with solicitations and repulses, I resolved 
to hide myself forever from the world, and depend no longer 
on the opinion or caprice of others. I waited for the time 
when the gate of the happy valley should open, that I might 
bid farewell to hope and fear : the day came ; my performance 
was distinguished with favor, and I resigned myself with joy 
to perpetual confinement.” 

“ Hast thou here found happiness at last ? Tell me without 
reserve ; art thou content with thy condition ? or, dost thou 
wish to be again wandering and inquiring ? All the inhabitants 
of this valley celebrate their lot, and at the annual visit of the 
emperor invite others to partake of their felicity.” 

“ Great prince,” said Imlac, I shall speak the truth ; I 


AASSELAS. 


32 

know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the 
hour when he entered this retreat. I am less unhappy than the 
rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I can 
vary and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my solitude by 
the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from 
my memory, and by recollections of the incidents of my past 
life. Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration, that my 
acquirements are now useless, and that none of my pleasures 
can be again enjoyed. The rest, whose minds have no im- 
pression but that of the present moment, are either corroded 
by malignant passions or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual 
vacancy.” 

“ What passions can infest those,” said the prince, “ who 
have no rivals ? We are in a place where impotence precludes 
malice, and where all envy is repressed by community of enjoy- 
ments.” 

“ There may be community,” said Imlac, “ of material pos- 
sessions, but there can never be community of love or of 
esteem. It must happen that one will please more than another: 
he that knows himself despised will always be envious ; and 
still more envious and, malevolent, if he is condemned to live 
in the presence of those who despise him. The invitations by 
which they allure others to a state which they feel to be 
wretched, proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless mis- 
ery. They are weary of themselves and of each other, and 
expect to find relief in new companions. They envy the 
liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see all 
mankind imprisoned like themselves. 

“ From this crime, however, I am wholly free. No man 
can say that he is wretched by my persuasion. I look with 
pity on the crowds who are annually soliciting admission into 
captivity, and wish that it were lawful for me to warn them of 
their danger.” 

“ My dear Imlac,” said the prince, “I will open to thee my 
whole heart I have long meditated an escape from the 
happy valley . I have examined the mountains on every side, 
and find myself insuperably barred : teach me the way to 
break my prison : thou shalt be the companion of my flight, 
the guide of my rambles, the partner of my fortune, and my 
sole director in the choice of life.” 

“ Sir,” answered the poet, “ your escape will be difficult ; 
and, perhaps, you may soon repent your curiosity. The w'orld, 
which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in 
the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests and boil- 


RASSELAS. 


33 


Ing with whirlpools : you will be sometimes overwhelmed with 
the waves of violence, and sometimes dashed against the 
rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds, competitions 
and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these seats 
of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear.” 

“ Do not seek to deter me from my purpose,” said the 
prince ; “ I am impatient to see what thou hast seen ; anc! 
since thou art thyself weary of the vailey, it is evident that 
thy former state was better than this. Whatever be the con- 
sequence of my experiment, I am resolved to judge with mine 
own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then, to mnke 
deliberately my choice of life. 

“ I am afraid,” said Imlac, “ you are hindered by stronger 
restraints than my persuasions ; yet, if your determination is 
fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impos- 
sible to diligence and skill. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

RASSELA3 DISCOVERS THE MEANS OF ESCAPE. 

The prince now dismissed his favorite to rest, but the 
narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with 
perturbation. He revolved all that he had heard, and prepared 
innumerable questions for the morning. 

Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a 
friend to whom he could impart his thoughts, and whose 
experience could assist him in his designs. His heart was no 
longer condemned to swell in silent vexation. He thought 
that even the happy valley might be endured with such a 
companion ; and that if they could range the world together, 
he should have nothing further to desire. 

In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground 
dried. The prince and Imlac then walked out together to 
converse without the notice of the rest. The prince, whose 
thoughts were always on the wing, as he passed' by the gate, 
said, with a countenance of sorrow, “ Why art thou so strong, 
and why is man so weak ? ” 

“Man is not weak,” answered his companion ; “ knowledge 
is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics 
laughs at strength. I can burst the gate, but cannot do it 
secretly. Some other expedient must be tried.” 

As they were walking on the side of the mountain, they 
3 


34 


AASSELAS. 


observed that the conies, which the rain had driven from 
their burrows, had taken shelter among the bushes, and formed 
holes behind them, tending upwards in an oblique line. “ It 
has been the opinion of antiquity,” said Imlac, “ that human 
reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals ; let 
us, therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning from 
the cony. We may escape by piercing the mountain in the 
same direction. We will begin where the summit hangs over 
the middle part, and labor upward till we shall issue up beyond, 
the prominence.” 

The eyes of the prince, when he heard this proposal, 
sparkled with joy. The execution was easy, and the success 
certain. 

No time was now lost. They hastened, early in the 
morning, to choose a place proper for their mind. They 
clambered with great fatigue among crags and brambles, and 
returned without having discovered any part that favored their 
design. The second and third day were spent in the same 
manner, and with the same frustration. But, on the fourth, 
they found a small cavern, concealed by a thicket, where they 
resolved to make their experiment. 

Imlac procured instruments proper to hue stone and 
remove earth, and they fell to their work the next day with 
more eagerness than vigor. They were presently exhausted 
by their efforts, and sat down to pant upon the grass. The 
prince, for a moment, appeared to be discouraged. “ Sir,” 
said his companion, “ practice will enable us to continue our 
labor for a longer time ; mark, however, how far we have 
advanced, and you will find that our toil will some time have 
an end. Great works are performed, not by strength, but by 
perseverence ; yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet 
you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall w^alk 
with vigor three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space 
equal to the circumference of the globe.” 

They returned to their work day after day ; and in a short 
time, found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass 
far with very little obstruction. This Rasselas considered as 
a good omen. “ Do . not disturb your mind,” said Imlac, 
u with other hopes and fears than reason may suggest • if you 
are pleased with prognostics of good, you will be terrified 
likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life will be a 
prey to superstition. Whatever facilitates our work is more 
than an omen, it is a cause of success. This is one of those 


RASSELAS. 


35 


pleasing surprises which often happen to active resolution. 
Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

RASSELAS AND IMLAC RECEIVE AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. 

They had now wrought their way to the middle, and 
solaced their thoughts with the approach of liberty, when the 
prince coming down to refresh himself with air, found his 
sister Nekayah standing before the mouth of the cavity. He 
started and stood cohfused, afraid to tell his design, and yet 
hopeless to conceal it. A few moments determined him to 
repose on her fidelity, and secure her secrecy by a declaration 
without reserve. 

“Do not imagine,” said the princess, “that I come hither 
as a spy ; I had long observed from my window, that you and 
Imlac directed your walk every day towards the same point, 
but I did not suppose you had any better reason for the 
preference than a cooler shade, or more fragrant bank ; nor 
followed you with any other design than to partake of your 
conversation. Since, then, not suspicion but fondness, has 
detected you, let me not lose the advantage of my discovery. 
I am equally weary of confinement with yourself, and not less 
desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world. 
Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless tranquility, 
which will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me. 
You may deny me to accompany you, but cannot hinder me 
from following.” 

The prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, 
had no inclination to refuse her request, and grieved that he 
had lost an opportunity of showing his confidence by a 
voluntary communication. It was therefore agreed that she 
should leave the valley with them ; and that, in the mean 
time, she should watch lest any other straggler should, by 
chance or curiosity, follow them to the mountain. 

At length their labor was at an end ; they saw light beyond 
the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain, 
beheld the Nile, yet a' narrow current, wandering beneath 
them. 

The prince looked round with rapture, and anticipated all 
the pleasure of travel, and in thought was already transported 
beyond his father’s dominions. Imlac, though very joyful at 


3 ^ 


RASSELAS. 


his escape, had less expectation of pleasure in the world, 
which he had before tried, and of which he had been weary. 

Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon that 
he could not soon be persuaded to return into the valley. He 
informed his sister that the way was open, and that nothing 
now remained but to prepare for their departure. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEAVE THE VALLEY AND SEE 
MANY WONDJERS. 

The prince and princess had jewels sufficient to make 
them rich whenever they came into a place of commerce, 
which, by Imlac’s direction, they might hide in their clothes ; 
and, on the night of the next full moon, all left the valley. 
The princess was followed only by a single favorite, who did 
not know whither she was going. 

They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down 
on the other side. The princess and her maid turned their 
eyes towards every part, and, seeing nothing to bound their 
prospect, considered themselves as in danger of being lost in 
a dreary vacuity. They stopped and trembled. “ I am 
almost afraid,” said the princess, “ to begin a journey of 
which I cannot perceive an end, and to venture into this 
immense plain, where I may be approached on every side by 
men I never saw.” The prince felt nearly the same emotions, 
though he thought it more manly to conceal them. 

Imlac smiled at their terrors, and encouraged them to 
proceed ; but the princess continued irresolute till she had 
been imperceptibly drawn forward too far to return. 

In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, 
who set milk and fruits before them. The princess wondered 
that she did not see a palace ready for her reception, and a 
table spread with delicacies ; but, being faint and hungry, 
she drank the milk and ate the fruits, and thought them of a 
higher flavor than the products of the valley. 

They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all 
unaccustomed to toil or difficulty, and knowing that, though 
they might be missed, they could not be pursued. In a few 
days they came into a more populous region, where Imlac 
was diverted with the admiration which his companions 


RASSELAS. 


37 


expressed at the diversity of manners, stations and employ- 
ments. 

Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the 
suspicion of having anything to conceal ; yet the prince, 
wherever he came, expected to be obeyed, and the princess 
was frightened because those who came into her presence did 
not prostrate themselves before her. Imlac was forced to 
observe them with great vigilance, lest they should betray 
their rank by their unusual behavior, and detained them 
several weeks in the first village, to accustom them to the 
sight of common mortals. 

By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand 
that they had laid aside their dignity, and were to expect only 
such regard as liberality and courtesy could procure. And 
Imlac, having, by many admonitions, prepared them to endure 
the tumults of a port, and the ruggedness of the commercial 
race, brought them down to the sea-coast. 

The prince and his sister, to whom everything was new, 
were gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained 
for some months at the port without any inclination to pass 
further, Imlac was content with their stay, because he did not 
think it safe to expose them, unpracticed in the world, to the 
hazards of a foreign country. 

At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, 
and proposed to fix the day for their departure. They had 
no pretensions to judge for themselves, and referred the 
whole scheme to his direction. He therefore took passage in 
a ship to Suez, and, when the time came, with great difficulty 
prevailed on the princess to enter the vessel. They had a 
quick and prosperous voyage ; and from Suez travelled by 
land to Cario. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THEY ENTER CAIRO, AND FIND EVERY MAN HAPPY. 

As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with 
astonishment, “ This,” said Imlac to the prince, “ is the place 
where travellers and merchants assemble from all the corners 
of the earth. You will here find men of every character, and 
every occupation. Commerce is here honorable : I will act as 
a merchant who has no other end of travel than curiosity ; it 
will soon be observed that we are rich : our reputation will 


RASSELAS. 


33 

procure us access to all whom we shall desire to know; you 
will see all the conditions of humanity, and. enable yourself at 
leisure to make your choice of life.” 

They now entered the town, stunned by the noise and 
offended by the crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed 
over habit, but that they wondered to see themselves pass 
undistinguished along the street, and met by the lowest of the 
people without reverence or notice. The princess could not at 
first bear the thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and for 
some days continued in her chamber, where she was served by 
her favorite Pekuah as in the palace of the valley. 

Imlac, who understood traffic, sold part of the jewels the 
next day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such mag- 
nificence, that he was immediately considered as a merchant 
of great wealth. His politeness attracted many acquaintances, 
and his generosity made him courted by many dependants. 
His table was crowded by men of every nation, who all 
admired his knowledge and solicited his favor. His compan- 
ions, not being able to mix in the conversation, could make 
no discovery of their ignorance or surprise, and were gradually 
initiated in the world as they gained knowledge of the 
language. 

The prince had, by frequent lectures, been taught the use 
and nature of money ; but the ladies could not for a long time 
comprehend what the merchants did with small pieces of gold 
and silver, of why things of so little use should be received as 
equivalent to the necessaries of life. 

They studied the language two years, while Imlac was pre- 
paring to set before them the various ranks and conditions of 
mankind. He grew acquainted with all who had anything 
uncommon in their fortune or conduct. He frequented the 
voluptuous and the frugal, the idle and the busy, the mer- 
chants and the men of learning. 

The prince being now able to converse with fluency, and 
having learned the caution necessary to be observed in his 
intercourse with strangers, began to accompany Imlac to 
places of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he might 
make his choice of life. 

For some time he thought choice needless, because all 
appeared to him equally happy. Wherever he went he met 
gayety and kindness, and heard the song of joy or the laughter 
of carelessness. He began to believe that the world over- 
flowed with universal plenty; and that nothing was withheld 
either from want or merit ; that every hand showered liberality, 


KASSELAS. 


39 


and ever)' heart melted with benevolence ; “ and who then,” 
says he, “ will be suffered to be wretched ! ” 

Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling 
to crush the hope of inexperience, till one day, having sat 
awhile silent, “ I know not,” said the prince, “ what can be 
the reason that I am more unhappy than any of our friends. 
I see them perpetually and unalterably cheerful, but feel my 
own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those 
pleasures which I seem most to court. I live in the crowds of 
jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and 
am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness.” 

“ Every man,” said Imlac, “ may by examining his own 
mind guess what passes in the minds of others : when you 
feel that your own gayety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you 
to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. Envy 
is commonly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced 
that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it pos- 
sessed by others to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for 
himself. In the assembly where you passed the last night, 
there appeared such sprightliness of air and volatility of fancy 
as might have suited beings of a higher order, formed to 
inhabit serener regions inaccessible to care or sorrow ; yet 
believe me, prince, there was not one who did not dread the 
moment when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of 
reflection.” 

“ This,” said the prince, “ may be true of others, since it is 
true of me ; yet whatever be the general infelicity of man, one 
condition is more happy than another, and wisdom surely 
directs us to take the least evil in the choice of life.” 

“ The causes of good and evil,” answered Imlac, “ are so 
various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so 
diversified by various relations, and so much subject to acci- 
dents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his con- 
dition upon incontestible reasons of preference must live and 
die inquiring and deliberating.” 

“ But, surely,” said Rasselas, “ the wise men, to whom we 
listen with reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for 
themselves which they thought most likely to make them 
happy.” 

“ Very few,” said the poet, “ live by choice. Every man is 
placed in his present condition by causes which acted without 
his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly co- 
operate ; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not 
think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.” 


40 


RASSELAS. 


“ I am pleased to think,” said the prince, “ that my birth 
has given me at least one advantage over others, by enabling 
me to determine for myself. I have here the world before me ; 
I will review it at leisure ; surely happiness is somewhere to be 
found.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PRINCE ASSOCIATES WITH YOUNG MEN OF SPIRIT 
AND GAYETY. 

Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his experi- 
ments upon life. (“ Youth,” cried he, “is the time of glad- 
/ness : I will join myself to the young men, whose only busi- 
/ ness is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all spent in 
a succession of enjoyments,” 

/ To such societies he was readily admitted ; but a few days 
brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was 
without images ; their laughter without motive ; their pleasures 
were gross and sensual, in which the mind had no part ; their 
conduct was at once wild and mean ; they laughed at order 
and law : but the frown of power dejected, and the eye of 
wisdom abashed them. 

The prince soon concluded that he should never be happy 
in a course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it 
unsuitable to a reasonable being to act without a plan, and to 
be sad or cheerful only by chance. “ Happiness,” said he, 
“ must be something solid and permanent, without fear and 
without uncertainty.” 

But his young companions had gained so much of his 
regard by their frankness and courtesy that he could not leave 
them without warning and remonstrance. “ My friends,” said 
he, “ I have seriously considered our manners and our pros- 
pects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The 
first years of man must make provision for the last. He that 
never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in 
ignorance ; and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for 
an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider 
that youth is of no long duration, and that in maturer age, 
when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of 
delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but 
the esteem of wise men, and the means of doing good. Let 
us, therefore, stop while to stop is in our power : let us live as 


RASSELAS. 


4i 


men who are sometimes to grow old, and to whom it will be 
the most dreadful of all evils no. to count their past years by 
follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health 
only by the maladies which riot has produced.” 

They stared awhile in silence one upon another, and at 
last drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter. 

The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his 
intentions kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against 
the horror of derision. But he recovered his tranquility, and 
pursued his search. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PRINCE FINDS A WISE AND HAPPY MAN. 

As he was one day walking in the street, he saw a spacious 
building, which all were, by the open doors, invited to enter; 
he followed the stream of people and found it a hall or school 
of declamation, in which professors read lectures to their audi- 
tory. He fixed his eye upon a sage raised above the rest, who 
discoursed with great energy on the government of the pas- 
sions. His look was venerable, his action graceful, his pro- 
nunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He showed, with 
great strength of sentiment and variety of illustration, that 
human nature is degraded and debased when the lower facul- 
ties predominate over the higher ; and when fancy, the parent 
of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues 
but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation, 
and confusion; that she betrays the fortresses of the intellect 
to rebels, and excites her children to sedition against reason, 
their lawful sovereign. He compared reason to the sun, of 
which the light is constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy 
to a meteor, of bright but transitory lustre, irregular in its 
motion, and delusive in its direction. 

He then communicated the various precepts given from 
time to time for the conquest of passion, and displayed the 
happiness of those who had obtained the important victory, 
af er which man is no longer the slave of fear, nor the 
fool of hope ; is no more emaciated by envy ; but walks 
on calmly through the tumults or privacies of life, as the 
sun pursues alike his course through the calm or the stormy 
sky. 

He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable 


42 


RASSELAS. 


by pain or pleasure, who looked with indifference on those 
modes or accidents to which the vulgar give the names of 
good and evil. He exhorted his hearers to lay aside their 
prejudices, and arm themselves against the shafts of malice 
or misfortune, by invulnerable patience : concluding that this 
state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in every- 
one’s power. 

Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the in- 
structions of a superior being ; and, waiting for him at the door, 
humbly implored the liberty of visiting so great a master of 
true wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Rasselas 
put a purse of gold into his hand, which he received with a 
mixture of joy and wonder. 

“ I have found,” said the prince, at his return to Imlac, 
“ a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known, who, 
from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on 
the scenes of life changing beneath him. He speaks, and at- 
tention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes 
his periods. This man shall be my future guide : I will learn 
his doctrines and imitate his life.” 

“ Be not too hasty,’ said Imlac, “ to trust, or to admire, 
the teachers of morality ; they discourse like angels, but they 
live like men.” 

Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason 
so forcibly without feeling the cogency of his own arguments, 
paid his visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He 
had now learned the power of money, and made his way by a 
piece of gold to the inner apartment, where he found the phi- 
losopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes misty, and his 
face pale. “ Sir,” said he, “ you are come at a time when all 
human friendship is useless ; what I suffer cannot be reme- 
died, what I have lost cannot be supplied. My daughter, my 
only daughter, from whose tenderness I expected all the com- 
forts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my 
purposes, my hopes are at an end : I am now a lonely being 
disunited from society.” 

“ Sir,” said the prince, “ mortality is an event by which a 
wise man can never be surprised : we know that death is 
always near, and it should therefore always be expected 
“Young man,” answered the philosopher, “you speak like 
one that has never felt the pangs of separation.” “ Have you 
then forgot the precepts,” said Rasselas, “ which you so pow- 
erfully enforced ? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart 
against calamity ? Consider that external things are natur- 


RASSELAS. 


43 


ally variable, but truth and reason are always the same.” 
“ What comfort,” said the mourner, “ can truth and reason 
afford me ? of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my 
daughter will not be restored ? ” 

The prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult 
misery with reproof, went away convinced of the emptiness of 
rhetorical sound, and the inefficacy of polished periods and 
studied sentences. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

A GLIMPSE OF PASTORAL LIFE. 

He was still eager upon the same inquiry; and having 
heard of a hermit that lived near the lowest cataract of the 
Nile, and filled the whole country with the fame of his sanc- 
tity, resolved to visit his retreat, and inquire whether that 
felicity, which public life could not afford, was to be found in 
solitude ; and whether a man whose age and virtue made him 
venerable, could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils or 
enduring them ? 

Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him ; and, 
after' the necessary preparations, they began their journey. 

Their way lay through the fields, where shepherds tended 
their flocks, and the lambs were playing upon the pasture. 
“ This,” said the poet, “ is the life which has been often 
celebrated for its innocence and quiet ; let us pass the 
heat of the day among shepherd’s tents, and know 
whether all our searches are not to terminate in pastoral 
simplicity.” 

The proposal pleased them, and they induced the shep- 
herds, by small presents, and familiar questions, to tell their 
opinion of their own state ; they were so rude and ignorant, so 
little able to compare the good with the evil of the occupa- 
tion, and so indistinct in their narratives and descriptions, 
that very little could be learned from them. But it was 
evident that their hearts were cankered with discontent ; that 
they considered themselves as condemned to labor for the 
luxury of the rich, and looked up with -stupid malevolence 
toward those that were placed above them. 

The princess pronounced with vehemence, that she would 
neve suffer these envious savages to be her companions, and 
that she should not soon be desirous of seeing any more 


44 


RASSELAS. 


specimens of rustic happiness ; but could not believe that all 
the accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous ; and was 
yet in doubt, whether life had anything that could be justly 
preferred to the placid gratifications of fields and woods. She 
hoped that the time would come, when, with a few virtuous 
and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by 
her own hand, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen, 
without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her 
maidens reading in the shade. 


CHAPTER XX. 

THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY. 

On the next day they continued their journey, till the heat 
compelled them to look round for shelter. At a small dis- 
tance they saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered 
than they perceived that they were approaching the habitations 
of men. The shrubs were dilligently cut away to open walks 
where the shades were darkest : the boughs of opposite trees 
were artificially interwoven ; seats of flowery turf were raised 
in vacant spaces: and a rivulet that wantoned along a 
winding path, had its banks sometimes opened into small 
basins, and its stream sometimes obstructed by little mounds 
of stone heaped together to increase its murmurs. 

They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such 
unexpected accommodations, and entertained each other with 
conjecturing what, or who he could be, that, in those rude 
and unfrequented regions, had leisure and art for such harm- 
less luxury. 

As they advanced, they heard the sound of music, and saw 
youths and virgins dancing in the grove ; and, going still fur- 
ther, beheld a stately palace built upon a hill surrounded with 
woods. The laws of eastern hospitality allowed them to 
enter, and the master welcomed them like a man liberal and 
wealthy. 

He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that 
they were no common guests, and spread his table with mag- 
nificence. The eloquence of Inflac caught his attention, and 
the lofty courtesy of the princess excited his respect. When 
they offered to depart he entreated their stay, and was the 
next day still more unwilling to dismiss them than before. 


RASSELAS. 


45 


They were easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in 
time to freedom and confidence. 

The prince now saw all the domestics cheerful, and all the 
face of nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear 
to hope he should find here what he was seeking : but when 
he was congratulating the master upon his possessions, he an- 
swered with a sigh, “ My condition has indeed the appearance 
of happiness, but appearances are delusive. My prosperity 
puts my life in danger ; the Bassa of Egypt is my enemy, in- 
censed only by my wealth and popularity. I have hitherto 
been protected against him by the princes of the country; 
but as the favor of the great is uncertain, I know not how 
soon my defenders may be persuaded to share the plunder 
with the Bassa. I have sent my treasures into a distant 
country, and, upon the first alarm, am prepared to follow them. 
Then will my enemies riot in my mansion, and enjoy the gar- 
dens which I have planted.” 

They all joined in lamenting his danger, and deprecating 
his exile ; and the princess was so much disturbed with the 
tumult of grief and indignation that she retired to her apart- 
ment. 

They continued with their kind inviter a few days longer, 
and then went forward to find the hermit. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE. THE HERMIT’S HISTORY. 

They came on the third day, by the direction of the peas- 
ants, to the hermit’s cell : it was a cavern in the side of a 
mountain, overshadowed with palm trees ; at such a distance 
from the cataract that nothing more was heard than a gentle 
uniform murmur, such as composed the mind to pensive 
meditation, especially when it was assisted by the wind whist- 
ling among the branches. The first rude essay of nature had 
been so much improved by human labor that the cave 
contained several apartments appropriated to different uses, 
and often afforded lodging to travellers, whom darkness or 
tempests happened to overtake. 

The hermit sat on a bench at the door to enjoy the coolness 
of the evening. On one side lay a book with pens and 
papers, on the other, mechanical instruments of various kinds. 
As they approached him unregarded, the princess observed 


46 


/{ASS EL AS. 


that he had not the countenance of a man that had found, or 
could teach the way to happiness. 

They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like 
a man not unaccustomed to the forms of courts. “ My 
children,” said he, “if you have lost your way, you shall be 
willingly supplied with such conveniences for the night as 
this cavern will afford. I have all that nature requires, and 
you will not expect delicacies in a hermit’s cell.” 

They thanked him ; and, entering, were pleased with the 
neatness and regularity of the place. The hermit set flesh 
and wine before them, though he fed only upon fruits and 
water. His discourse was cheerful without levity, and pious 
without enthusiasm. He soon gained the esteem of his guests, 
and the princess repented of her hasty censure. 

At last Imlac began thus : “ I do not now wonder that your 
reputation is so far extended : we have heard at Cairo of your 
wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this 
young man and maiden in the choice of life” 

“ To him that lives well,” answered the hermit, “ every 
form of life is good ; nor can I give any other rule for choice 
than to remove from all apparent evil.” 

“ He will remove most certainly from evil,” said the prince, 
“who shall devote himself to that solitude which you have 
recommended by your example.” 

“ I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,” said the 
hermit, “but have no desire that my example should gain 
any imitators. In my youth I professsd arms, and was raised 
by degrees to the highest military rank. I have traversed 
wide countries at the head of my troops, and seen many 
battles and sieges. At last, being disgusted by the prefer- 
ments of a younger officer, and feeling that my vigor was 
beginning to decay, I resolved to close my life in peace, 
having found the world full of snares, discord, and misery. 
I had once escaped from the pursuit of the enemy by the 
shelter of this cavern, and therefore chose it for my final 
residence. I employed artificers to form it into chambers, 
and stored it with all that I was likely to want. 

“ For some time after my retreat, I rejoiced like a tempest 
beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbor, being delighted 
with the sudden change of the noise and hurry of war to 
stillness and repose. When the pleasures of novelty went 
away, I employed my hours in examining the plants which 
grew in the valley, and the minerals which I collected from 
the rocks. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and 


RASSELAS. 


47 


irksome. I have been for some time unsettled and distracted : 
my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt, 
and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, 
because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion. I 
am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself 
from vice, but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and 
begin to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment 
than led by devotion into solitude. My fancy riots in scenes 
of folly, and I lament that I have lost so much, and have 
gained so little. In solitude, if I escape the example of bad 
men, I want likewise the counsel and conversation of the 
good. I have been long comparing the evils with the advan- 
tages of society, and resolve to return into the world to-morrow. 
The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but 
not certainly devout.” 

They heard his resolution with surprise, but after a short 
pause offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a 
considerable treasure which he had hid among the rocks, and 
accompanied them to the city, on which, as he approached it, 
he gazed with rapture. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE HAPPINESS OF A LIFE LED ACCORDING TO NATURE. 

Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who 
met at stated times to unbend their minds, and compare their 
opinions. Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their 
conversation was instructive, and their disputations acute, 
though sometimes too violent, and often continued till neither 
controvertist remembered upon what question they began. 
Some faults were almost general among them : everyone was 
desfrous to dictate to the rest, and everyone was pleased to 
hear the genius or knowledge of another depreciated. 

In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with 
the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure 
a course of life which he had so deliberately chosen, and so 
laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were vari- 
ous. Some were of opinion that the folly of his choice had 
been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual perserver- 
ance. One of the youngest among them, with great vehe- 
mence pronounced him a hypocrite. Some talked of the right 
cf society to the labor of individuals, and considered retirement 


4 § 


KASSELAS. 


as a desertion from duty. Others readily allowed, that there 
was a time when the claims of the public were satisfied, and 
when a man might properly sequester himself to review his 
life and purify his heart. 

“One, who appeared more affected with the narrative 
than the rest, thought it likely that the hermit would, in a few 
years, go back to his retreat, and perhaps, if shame did not 
restrain, or death intercept him, return once more from his 
retreat into the world : “ For the hope of happiness,” said he 
“ is so strongly impressed that the longest experience is not 
able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel, 
and are forced to confess, the misery ; yet, when the same 
state is again at distance, imagination paints it as desirable. 
But the time will surely come, when desire will be no longer 
our tormentor, and no man shall be wretched but by his own 
fault.” 

“ This,” said a philospher, who had heard him with tokens 
of great impatience, “ is this present condition of a wise man. 
The time is already come when none are wretched but by 
their own fault. Nothing is more idle than to inquire after 
happiness, which nature -has kindly placed within our reach 
The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedi- 
ience to that universal and unalterable law with which every 
heart is originally impressed ; which is not written on it by 
precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, 
but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to na- 
ture will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope, or im- 
portunities of desire : he will receive and reject with equabil- 
ity of temper ; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall 
alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves 
with subtle definitions, or intricate ratiocinations. Let them 
learn to be wise by easier means : let them observe the hind 
of the forest, and the linnet of the grove : let them con- 
sider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated 
by instinct : they obey their guide, and are happy. Let us 
therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live ; throw 
away the incumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them 
with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry 
with us this simple and intelligible maxim, That deviation 
from nature is deviation from happiness.” 

When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, 
and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. “ Sir,” 
said the prince, with great modesty, “ as I* like all the rest of 
mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has 


KASSELAS. 


49 


been fixed upon your discourse ; I doubt not the truth of a 
position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. 
Let me only know what it is to live according to nature ? ” 

“ When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said 
the philosopher, “ I can deny them no information which my 
studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to na- 
ture is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from 
the relations and qualities of causes and effects : to concur with 
the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity ; to 
co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the 
present system of things.” 

The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom 
he should understand less as he heard him longer. He 
therefore bowed and was silent ; and the philosopher, sup- 
posing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up, and 
departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the 
present system. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE PRINCE AND HIS SISTER DIVIDE BETWEEN THEM THE 
WORK OF OBSERVATION. 

Rasselas returned home full of reflections, doubtful how to 
direct his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found 
the learned and simple equally ignorant ; but, as he was yet 
young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for 
more experiments and further inquiries. He communicated 
to Imlac his observations and his doubts, but was answered 
by him with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no com- 
fort. He therefore discoursed more frequently and freely 
with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and 
always assisted him to give some reason why, though he had 
been hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last. 

“We have hitherto,” said she, “known but little of the 
world : we have never yet been either great or mean. In our 
own country, though we had royalty, we had no power ; and 
in this we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestic 
peace. Imlac favors not our search, lest we should in time 
find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us : you 
shall try what is to be found in the splendor of courts, and I 
will range in the shade of humbler life. Perhaps command 
and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford 
4 


50 


RASSELAS. 


most opportunities of doing good ; or, perhaps what this world 
can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle 
fortune ; too low for great designs, and too high for penury 
and distress.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE PRINCE EXAMINES THE -HAPPINESS OF HIGH STATIONS. 

Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day 
with a splendid retinue at the court of the Bassa. He was 
soon distinguished for his magnificence, and admitted, as a 
prince whose curiosity had brought him from distant countries, 
to an intimacy with the great officers, and frequent conversa- 
tion with the Bassa himself. 

He was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be 
pleased with his own condition whom all approached with 
reverence, and heard with obedience, and who had the power 
to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. “ There can be no 
pleasure,” said he, “ equal to that of feeling at once the joy 
of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet, 
since by the law of subordination this sublime delight can be 
in one nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to 
think that there is some satisfaction more popular and acces-' 
sible, and that millions can hardly be subjected to the will of 
a single man, only to fill his particular breast with incommu- 
nicable content.” 

These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no 
solution of the difficulty. But as presents and civilities gained 
him more familiarity, he found that almost every man who 
stood high in employment hated all the rest, and was hated 
by them, and that their lives was a continual succession of 
plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and 
treachery. Many of those who surrounded the Bassa 
were sent only to watch and report his conduct; every 
tongue was muttering censure, and every eye was searching 
for a fault. 

At last the letters of revocation arrived, the Bassa was car- 
ried in chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned 
no more. 

“ What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power ? ” 
said Rasselas to his sister ; “ is it without any efficacy to 
good ? or, is the subordinate degree only dangerous, and the 


XASSELAS. 


5 * 


supreme safe and glorious ? Is the Sultan the only happy 
man in his dominion ? or, is the Sultan himself subject to the 
torments of suspicion, and the dread of enemies ? ” 

In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The 
Sultan that had advanced him was murdered by the Jan- 
izaries, and his successor had other views and different fa- 
vorites. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

THE PRINCESS PURSUES HER INQUIRY WITH MORE DILIGENCE 
THAN SUCCESS. 

The princess, in the mean time, insinuated herself into 
many families ; for there are few doors through which liber- 
ality, joined with good humor, cannot find its way. The 
daughters of many houses were airy and cheerful ;• but Neka- 
yah had been too long accustomed to the conversation of 
Imlac and her brother, to be much pleased with childish 
levity, and prattle which had no meaning. She found their 
thoughts narrow, their wishes low, and their merriment often 
artificial. Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be 
preserved pure, but were imbittered by petty competitions and 
worthless emulation. They w r ere always jealous of the beauty 
of each other; of a quality .to which solicitude can add no- 
thing, and from which detraction can take nothing away. Many 
were in love with triflers like themselves, and many fancied 
that they were in love when in truth they were only idle. 
Their affection was not fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore 
seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief, however, like 
their joy, was transient : everything floated in their mind 
unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily 
gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water 
effaces and confounds the circles of the first. 

With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals and 
found them proud of her countenance, and weary of her 
company. 

But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her 
affability easily persuaded the hearts that were swelling with 
sorrow to discharge their secrets in her ear ; and those whom 
hope flattered, or prosperity delighted, often courted her to 
partake their pleasures. 

The princess and her brother commonly met in the evening 


A 'ASSELAS. 




in a private summer-house on the bank of the Nile, and 
related to each other the occurrences of the day. As they 
were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes upon the 
river that flowed before her. “ Answer,” said she, “ great 
father of waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty 
nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. 
Tell me if thou waterest through all thy course, a single 
habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of 
complaint 1 ” 

“You are, then,” said Rasselas, “ not more successful in 
private houses than I have been in courts.” “ I have, since 
the last partition of our provinces,” said the princess, 
“ enabled myself to enter familiarly into many families, where 
there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace, and know 
not one house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys 
their quiet. 

“ I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded 
that there it couldn't be found. But I saw many poor, whom 
I had supposed to live in affluence. Poverty has, in large 
cities, very different appearances ; it is often concealed in 
splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the care of a great 
part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest ; 
they support themselves by temporary expedients, and every 
day is lost in contriving for the morrow. 

“ This, however, was an evil which, though frequent, I sa\y 
with less pain, because I could relieve it. Yet some have 
refused my bounties ; more offended with my quickness to 
detect their wants than pleased with my readiness to succor 
them, and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit 
my kindness, have never been able to forgive their bene- 
factress. Many, however, have been sincerely grateful, 
without the ostentation of gratitude, or the hope of other 
favors. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE 

LIFE. 

Neka YAH, perceiving her brother's attention fixed, pro- 
ceeded in her narrative. 

In families where there is or is not poverty, there is 
commonly discord ; if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a 


EASSELAS. 


53 


great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom torn with 
factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpracticed observer 
expects the love of parents and children to be constant and 
equal ; but this kindness seldom continues beyond the years 
of infancy ; in a short time the children become rivals to their 
parents. Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude 
debased by envy. 

“ Parents and children seldom act in concert ; each child 
endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the 
parents, and the parents, with less temptation, betray each 
other to their children ; thus some place their confidence in 
the father, and some in the mother, and by degrees the house 
is filled with artifices and feuds. 

“ The opinions of children and parents, of the young and 
the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope 
and despondence, of expectation and experience, without 
crime or folly on either side. The colors of life in youth and 
age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and 
winter. And how can children credit the assertions of 
parents, which their own eyes show them, to be false ? 

“ Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce 
their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man 
trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual progression ; the 
youth expects to force his way by genius, vigor, and precipi- 
tance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth 
reverences virtue. The old man defies prudence; the youth 
commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, 
who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and there- 
fore acts with openness and candor ; but his father, having 
suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too 
often allured to practice it. Age looks with anger on the 
temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity 
of age. Thus parents and children, for the greatest part, live 
on to love less and less ; and if those whom nature has thus 
closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we 
look for tenderness and consolation ! ” 

“ Surely,” said the prince, “ you must have been unfortu- 
nate in your choice of acquaintance : I am unwilling to 
believe, that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded 
in its effects by natural necessity.” 

“ Domestic discord,” answered she, “ is not inevitably and 
fatally necessary ; but yet it is not easy to avoid. We seldom 
see that a whole family is virtuous ; the good and evil cannot 
well agree ; and the evil can yet less agree with one another ; 


54 


KASSELAS . 


even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their 
virtues are of different kinds, and tending, to extremes. In 
general, those parents have most reverence that most deserve 
it : for he that lives well cannot be despised. 

“ Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves 
of servants whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some 
are kept in continual anxiety by the caprice of rich relations, 
whom they cannot please and dare not offend. Some hus- 
bands are imperious, and some wives perverse : and as it is 
always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or 
virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or 
vice of one may often make many miserable.” 

“ If such be the general effect of marriage,” said the prince, 
“ I shall, for the future, think it dangerous to connect my 
interest with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my 
partner’s fault.” 

“ I have met,” said the princess, “ with many who live 
single for that reason : but I have never found that their pru- 
dence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time 
without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid 
themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish 
amusements or vicious delights. They act as beings under 
the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their 
minds with rancor ; and their tongues with censure. They, 
are peevish at home, and malevolent abroad ; and, as the 
outlaws of human nature, make it their business and their 
pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from its 
privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to 
be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or af- 
flicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy 
than solitude ; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. 
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.” 

“ What, then, is to be done ? ” said Rasselas ; “ the more 
'We inquire the less we can resolve. Surely he is most likely 
;to please himself that has no other inclination or regard.” 


KASSELAS. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

DISQUISITION UPON GREATNESS. 

if 

The conversation had a short pause. The prince, having 
considered his sister’s observations, told her, that she had sur- 
veyed life with prejudice, and supposed misery where she did 
not find it. “ Your narrative,” says he, “ throws yet a darker 
gloom upon the prospects of futurity , the predictions of Imlac 
were but faint sketches of the evils painted by Nekayah. I 
have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of 
grandeur or of power : that her presence is not to be bought 
by wealth, nor enforced by conquest. It is evident, that as 
any man acts in a wider compass, he must be more exposed 
to opposition from enmity, or miscarriage fiom chance ; who- 
ever has many to please or to govern must use the ministry of 
many agents, some of whom will be wicked, and some ignor- 
ant ; by some he will be misled, and by others betrayed. If 
he gratifies one, he willl offend another: those that are not 
favored will think themselves injured : and, since favors can 
be conferred but upon few, the greater number will be always 
discontented.” 

“ The discontent,” said the princess, “ which is thus unrea- 
sonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to despise, and 
you power to repress.” 

“ Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “ will not always be 
without reason under the most just and vigilant administra- 
tion of public affairs. None, however attentive, can always 
discover that merit which indulgence or faction may happen 
to obscure ; and none, however powerful, can always reward 
it Yet he that sees inferior desert advanced above him will 
naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice ; and, 
indeed, it can scarcely be hoped that any man, however mag- 
naniiasous by nature, or exalted by condition, will be able to 
persist forever in the fixed and inexorable justice of distribu- 
tion ; he will sometimes indulge his own affections, and some- 
times those of his favorites ; he will permit some to please 
him who cavi never serve him ; he will discover, in those 
whom he lore's, qualities which in reality they do possess ; 
and to those, .from whom he receives pleasure, he will in his 


56 


RASSELAS. 


turn endeavor to give it. Thus will recommendations some- 
times prevail which were purchased by money, or by the more 
destructive bribery of flattery and servility. 

“ He that has much to do will do something wrong, and of 
that wrong must suffer the consequences ; and if it were pos- 
sible that he should always act rightly, yet when such num- 
bers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and 
obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by 
mistake. 

“ The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be abodes 
of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from 
thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid 
obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction, or intercept 
the expectations, of him whose abilities are adequate to his 
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of 
his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he 
trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear ? 
Surely he has nothing to do but to love and to be loved, to be 
virtuous, and to be happy.” 

“ Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect 
goodness,” said Nekayah, “ this world will never afford an 
opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be main- 
tained, that we do not always find visible happiness in propor- 
tion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all political 
evils are incident alike to the bad and good : they are con- 
founded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished 
in the fury of a faction ; they sink together in a tempest, and 
are driven together from their country by invaders. All that 
virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady pros- 
pect of a happier state ; this may enable us to endure calamity 
with patience ; but remember that patience must oppose 
pain.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

RASSELAS AND NEKEYAH CONTINUE THEIR CONVERSATION. 

“ Dear princess,” said Rasselas, “ You fall into the com- 
mon errors of exaggeratory declamation, by producing, in a 
familiar disquisition, examples of national calamities, and 
scenes of extensive misery, which are found in books rather 
than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained 
to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, 


A’ASS£LAS. 


57 


nor injure life by misrepresentations. I cannot bear that 
querulous eloquence which threatens every city with a siege 
like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every 
flight of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing of every 
blast that issues from the south. 

“ On necessary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm king- 
doms at once, all disputation is vain : when they happen, they 
must be endured. But it is evident that these bursts of uni- 
versal distress are more dreaded than felt ; thousands and ten 
thousands flourish in youth and wither in age, without the 
knowledge of any other domestic evils, and share the same 
pleasures and vexations, whether their kings are mild or cruel, 
whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies or 
retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intes- 
tine competitions, and ambassadors are negotiating in foreign 
countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman 
drives his plough forward : the necessities of life are required 
and obtained ; and the successive business of the seasons 
continues to make its wonted revolutions. 

“ Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, 
and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human specula- 
tion. We will not endeavor to modify the motions of the ele- 
ments, or to fix the destiny of kingdoms, jit is our business 
to consider what beings like us may perform ; each laboring 
for his own happiness by promoting within his circle, however 
narrow, the happiness of others/ 

“ Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature ; men and 
women are made to be companions of each other, and there- 
fore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of the 
means of happiness.” 

“ I know not,” said the princess, “ whether marriage be 
more than one of the innumerable modes of human misery. 
When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infe- 
licity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversi- 
ties of temper, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions 
of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, 
the obstinate contests of disagreeable virtues where both are 
supported by consciousness of good intention, I am some- 
times disposed to think, with the severer casuists of most na- 
tions, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and 
that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much in- 
dulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts.” 

“ You seem to forget,” replied Rasselas, “that you have, 
even now, represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. 


RASSELAS. 


5S 

Both conditions may be bad, but they cannot both be worst. 
Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that 
they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to 
truth.” 

“ I did not expect,” answered the princess, “ to hear that 
imputed to falsehood which is the consequence only of frailty. 
To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with 
exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their 
parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once, we 
readily note the discriminations, and decide the preference ; 
but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any 
human being in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity 
of complication, where is the wonder that, judging of the whole 
by parts, I am alternately affected by one and the other, as 
either presses on my memory or fancy ? We differ from our- 
selves just as we differ from each other, when we see only 
parts of the question, as in the multifarious relations of politics 
and morality ; but when we we perceive the whole at once, as 
numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, and none 
ever varies his opinion,” 

“ Let us not add,” said the prince, “ to the other evils of 
life the bitterness tf controversy, nor endeavor to vie with 
each other in subtilties of argument. We are employed in a 
search, of which both are equally to enjoy the success*, or 
suffer by the miscarriage. It is therefore fit that we assist 
each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the infe- 
licity of marriage against its institution : will not the misery 
of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of Heaven ? 
The world must be peopled by marriage, or peopled without 
it.” 

“'How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, “ is 
not my care, and needs not be yours. I see no danger that 
the present generation should omit to leave successors behind 
them : we are not now inquiring for the world, but for our- 
selves.” 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE DEBATE OF MARRIAGE CONTINUED. 

“The good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “ is the same 
with the good of all its parts., If marriage be best for man- 
kind, it must be evidently best for individuals, or a permanent 


RASSELAS. 


59 


and necessary duty must be the cause of evil, and some must 
be inevitably sacrificed to the convenience of others. In the 
estimate which you have made of the two states, it appears 
that the incommodities of a single life are, in a great measure, 
necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state acci- 
dental and avoidable. 

“ I cannot forbear to flatter myself, that prudence and ben- 
evolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of 
mankind is the cause of general complaint. What can be ex- 
pected but disappointment and repentance from a choice 
made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardor of desire, with- 
out judgment, without foresight, without inquiry after con- 
formity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judg- 
ment, or purity of sentiment ? 

“ Such is the common process of marriage. A youth or 
maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, 
exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream 
of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify 
thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and 
therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They 
marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness 
before had concealed : they wear out life in altercations, and 
charge nature with cruelty. 

“ From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry 
of parents and children ; the son eager to enjoy the world 
before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly 
room at once for two generations. The daughter begins to 
bloom before the mother can be content to fade, and neither 
can forbear to wish for the absence of the other. 

“ Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation 
and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. 
In the variety and jollity of youthful pleasures life may be 
well enough supported without the help of a partner. Longer 
time will increase experience, and wider views will allow better 
opportunities of inquiry and selection : one advantage, at 
least, will be certain ; the parents will be visibly older than 
thejr children.” 

“\ What reason cannot collect,” said Nekeyah, “ and what 
experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the 
report of others. j 1 have been told that late marriages are 
not eminently happy. This is a question too important to be 
neglected, and I have often proposed it to those whose 
accuracy of remark and comprehensiveness of knowledge 
made their suffrages worthy of regard. They have generally 


6o 


RASSELAS. 


determined that it is dangerous for a man and woman to 
suspend their fate upon each other, at a time when opinions 
are fixed, and habits are established ; when friendships are 
contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into 
method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of 
its own prospects. 

“It is scarcely possible that two, travelling through the 
world, under the conduct of chance, should have been both 
directed to the same path, and it will not often happen that 
either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing. 
When the desultory levity of youth has settled into regularity, 
it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or obstinacy 
delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem 
produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies 
unchangeably die external mien, determines likewise the 
direction of the passions, and gives an inflexible rigidity to 
the manners. Long customs are not easily broken ; he that 
attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors 
in vain ; and how shall we do that for others, which we are 
seldom able to do for ourselves ?/” 

“.But surely,” interposed the prince, “ you suppose the 
chief motive of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I 
shall seek a wife, it shall be my first question, whether she 
be willing to be led by reason ? ” 

“ Thus it is,” said Nekayah, “ that philosophers are 
deceived. There are a thousand familiar disputes which 
reason never can decide ; questions that elude investigation, 
and make logic ridiculous ; cases where something must be 
done, and where little can be said. Consider the state of 
mankind, and inquire how few can be supposed to act upon 
any occasions, whether small or great, with all the reasons of 
action present to their minds. Wretched would be the pair 
above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to 
adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a 
domestic day. 

“ Those who marry at an advanced age will probably 
escape the encroachments of their children ; but, in diminu- 
tion of this advantage, they will be likely to leave them, 
ignorant and helpless, to a guardian’s mercy ; or if that 
should not happen, they must at least go out "of the world 
before they see those whom they* love best either wise or 
great. 

“ From their children, if they have less to fear, they have 
less also to hope ; and they lose, without equivalent, the joys 


KASSEL AS. 


61 


of early love, and the convenience of uniting with manners 
pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which 
might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation ; as 
soft bodies, by continual attrition conform their surfaces to 
each other. 

“ I believe it will be found that those who marry late are 
best pleased with their children, and those who marry early 
with their partners.” 

“ The union of these two affections,” said Rasselas, “ would 
produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time 
when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for 
the father, nor too late for the husband.” 

“ Every hour,” answered the princess, “ confirms my 
prejudice in favor of the position so often uttered by the 
mouth of Imlac, r That nature sets her gifts on the right 
hand and on the left.’j Those condititions, which flatter 
hope and attract desire, are so constituted that, as we 
approach one, we recede from another. There are goods so 
opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much 
prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to 
reach each other. This is often the fate of long considera- 
tion ; he does nothing who endeavors to do more than is 
allowed to hunpnity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties 
of pleasure. Of the blessings set before you make your 
choice, and be content. |No man can taste the fruits of 
autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of 
spring ; no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the 
source and from the mouth of the Nile?] 

, — 1 


CHAPTER XXX. 

IMLAC ENTERS AND CHANGES THE CONVERSATION. 

Here Imlac entered and interrupted them. “ Imlac,” said 
Rasselas, “ I have been taking from the princess the dismal 
history of private life, and am almost discouraged from 
further search.” 

“ It seems to me,” said ImW, “ that while you are making 
the choice of life, you neglecfto live. You wander about a 
single city, which, howevert'farge and diversified, can now 
afford few novelties, and torget that you are in a country 
famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and 
wisdom of its inhabitants ; a country where the sciences first 


/TASSEL AS. 


b2 

dawned that illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts 
cannot be traced of civil society or domestic life. 

“ The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of 
industry and power, before which all European magnificence 
is confessed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture 
are the schools of modern builders, and from the wonders 
which time has spared, we may conjecture, though uncer- 
tainly, what it has destroyed.” 

“ My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “ does not very strongly 
lead me to survey the piles of stone or mounds of earth; 
my business is with man. I came hither not to measure 
fragments of temples, or trace choked aqueducts, but to 
look upon the various scenes of the present world.” 

“ The things that are now before us,” said the princess, 
“ require attention and deserve it. What have I to do with 
the heroes or the monuments of ancient times ? with times 
which can never return, and heroes, whose form of life was 
different from all that the present condition of man requires 
or allows ? ” 

“To know anything,” returned the poet, “ we must know 
its effects ; to see men we must see 'their works, that we may 
learn what reason has dictated, or passion has incited, and 
find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge 
rightly of the present, we must oppose it to the past ; for 
all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can 
be known.; The truth is, that no mind is much employed 
upon the present ; recollection and anticipation fill up almost 
all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief, love and 
hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the 
object, and the future of hope and fear ; even love and hatred 
respect the past, for the cause must have been before the 
effect. 

“ The present state of things is the consequence of the 
former, and it is natural to inquire what were the sources of 
the good that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act 
only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not pru- 
dent : if we are intrusted with the care of others, if is not 
just. Ignorance, wh.en it is voluntary', is criminal ; and he 
may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how 
he might prevent it. 

“There is no part of history so generally useful as that 
which relates the progress of the human mind, the gradual 
improvement of reason, the successive advances of science, 
the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light 


KASSEL AS. 


63 


and darkness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscita- 
tion of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If 
accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business 
of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected ; 
those who have kingdoms to govern have understandings to 
cultivate. 

V Example is always more efficacious than precept.’ A sol- 
dier is formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In 
this, contemplative life has the advantage : ( great actions are 
seldom seen, but the labors of art are always at hand for 
thpse who desire to know what art has been able to perform.*' 
//“ When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncom- 
mon work, the next transition of an active mind is to the 
means by which it was performed. ; Here begins the true use 
of such contemplation ; we enlarge our comprehension by new 
ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to mankind, or learn 
what is less perfectly known in our country. At least we com- 
pare our own with former times, and either rejoice at our 
improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good, dis- 
cover our defects.” 

“ I am willing,” said the prince, “ to see all that can deserve 
my search.” “ And I,” said the princess, “ shall rejoice to 
learn something of the manners of antiquity.” 

“ The most pompous monument of Egyptian greatness, and 
one of the most bulky works of manual industry,” said Imlac, 
“ are the Pyramids ; fabrics raised before the time of history, 
and of which the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain 
traditions. Of these the greatest is still standing, very little 
injured by time.” 

“ Let us visit them to-morrow,” said Nekeyah. “ I have 
often heard of the Pyramids and shall not rest until I have 
seen them within and without with my own eyes.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

THEY VISIT THE PYRAMIDS. 

The resolution being taken, they set out the next day. 
They laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay 
among the Pyramids till their curiosity was fully satisfied. 
They travelled gently, turned aside to everything remarkable, 
stopped from time to time and conversed with the inhabitants, 


64 


RASSELAS. 


and observed the various appearances of towns ruined and 
inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature. 

When they came to the great Pyramid, they were astonished 
at the extent of the base, and the height of the top. Imlac 
explained to them the principles upon which the pyramidal 
form was chosen for a fabric intended to co-extend its dura- 
tion with that of the world : he showed that its gradual 
diminution gave it such stability as defeated all the common 
attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by 
earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. 
A concussion that should shatter the Pyramid would threaten 
the dissolution of the continent. 

They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents 
at its foot. Next day they prepared to enter its interior apart- 
ments ; and, having hired the common guides, climbed up to 
the first passage, when the favorite of the princess, looking 
into the cavity, stepped back and trembled. “ Pekuah,” said 
the princess, “ of what art thou afraid?” “Of the narrow 
entrance,” answered the lady, “ and of the dreadful gloom. I 
dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by 
unquiet souls. The original possessors of these dreadful 
vaults will start up before us, and perhaps shut us in forever.” 
She spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of her mistress. 

“ If all your fear be of apparitions,” said the prince, “"I 
will promise you safety ; there is no danger from the dead ; 
he that is once buried will be seen no more.” 

That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “ I will not 
undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried 
testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, 
rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not 
related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails 
as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only 
by its truth ; those that never heard of one another would not 
have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make 
credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little 
weaken the general evidence ; and some who deny it with their 
tongues confess it by their fears. 

“ Yet I do not mean to add new terrors to those which have 
already seized upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why 
spectres should haunt the Pyramid more than other places, or 
why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and 
purity. Our entrance is no violation of their privileges ; we 
can take nothing from them, how then can we offend them ? ” 

“ My dear Pekuah,” said the princess, “ I will always go 


RASSELAS. 65 

before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you 
are the companion of the princess of Abyssinia.” 

“ If the princess is pleased that her servant should die,” 
returned the lady, “let her command some death less dreadful 
than enclosure in this horrid cavern ; you know I dare not 
disobey you ; I must go if you command me ; but, if I once 
enter, I never shall come back.” 

The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostu- 
lation or reproof ; and, embracing her, told her that she should 
stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was yet not satisfied, 
but entreated the princess not to pursue so dreadful a purpose 
as that of entering the recesses of the Pyramid. “Though I 
cannot teach courage,” said Nekeyah, “ I must not learn 
cowardice ; nor leave at last undone what I came hither only 
to do.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

THEY ENTER THE PYRAMID. 

Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the 
Pyramid : they passed through the galleries, surveyed the 
vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the body 
of the founder is supposed to hava been reposited. They 
then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers to rest 
awhile before they attempted to return. 

“We have now,” said Imlac, “gratified our minds with an 
exact view of the greatest work of man, except the wall of 
China. 

“Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motive. It 
secured a wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of 
barbarians, whose unskilfulness in the arts made it easier for 
them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry, and 
who from time to time poured in upon the habitations of peace- 
ful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestic fowls. 
Their celerity and fierceness rendered the wall necessary, 
and their ignorance made it efficacious. 

“ But for the Pyramids no reason has ever been given ade- 
quate to the cost and labor of the work. The narrowness of 
the chambers proves that it could afford no retreat from ene- 
mies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less ex- 
pense with equal security. It seems to have been erected only 
f ? 


66 


RASSELAS ; 


in compliance with that hunger of imagination which preys 
incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some 
employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy 
must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use, till use-is 
supplied, must begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan 
to the utmost power of human performance, that he may not 
be soon reduced to form another wish. 

“I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the 
insufficiency of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is 
unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imagi- 
nary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a 
Pyramid, iehe satiety of dominion and tastelessness of pleas- 
ures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life by seeing 
thousands laboring without end, and one stone, for no pur- 
pose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art that, not content 
with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal 
magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed 
the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey 
the Pyramids, and confess thy folly.” 


CHATPER XXXIII 

THE PRINCESS MEETS WITH AN UNEXPECTED MISFORTUNE. 

They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they 
had entered, and the princess prepared for her favorite a 
■ long narrative of dark labyrinths and costly rooms, and of 
the different impressions which the varieties of the way had 
made upon her. But when they came to their train, they 
found every one silent and dejected ; the men discovered 
shame and fear in their countenance, and the women were 
weeping in the tents. 

What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but im- 
mediately inquired. “You had scarcely entered into the 
Pyramid, said one of the attendants, “ when a troop of Arabs 
rushed upon us : we were too few to resist them, and too slow 
to escape. They were about to search the tents, set us on 
our camels, and drive us along before them, when the approach 
of some Turkish horseman put them to flight ; but they 
seized the lady Pekuah with her two maids, and carried her 
away ; the Turks are now pursuing them by our instigation, 
but I fear they will not be able to overtake them.” 

The princess was overpowered with surprise a n.d grief. 


RASSELAS . 


67 


Rasselas, in the first heat of his resentment, ordered his ser- 
vants to follow him, and prepared to pursue the robbers with 
his sabre in his hand. “ Sir,” said Imlac, “ what can you 
hope from violence or valor ? the Arabs are mounted" on 
horses trained to battle and retreat ; we have only beasts of 
burden. By leaving our present station we may lose the 
princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah.” 

In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able 
te reach the enemy. The princess burst out into new lamenta- 
tions and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them 
with cowardice ; but Imlac was of opinion that the escape of 
the Arabs was no addition to their misfortune, for perhaps 
they would have killed their captives rather than have resigned 
them. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THEY RETURN TO CAIRO WITHOUT PEKUAH. 

There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They 
returned to Cairo, repenting of their curiosity, censuring the 
negligence of the government, lamenting their own rashness, 
which had neglected to procure a guard, imagining many 
expedients by which the loss of Pekuah might have been 
prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery, 
through none could find anything proper to be done. 

Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women at- 
tempted to comfort her, by telling her that all had their 
troubles, and that lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness 
in the world for a long time, and might reasonably expect a 
change of fortune. They hoped that some good would befall 
her wheresoever she was, and that their mistress would find 
another friend who might supply her place. 

The princess made them no answer, and they continued the 
form of condolence, not much grieved in their hearts that the 
favorite was lost. 

Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of 
the wrong which he had suffered, and a petition for redress. 
The Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, but did not at- 
tempt to catch them, nor indeed could any account or descrip- 
tion be given by which he might direct the pursuit. 

It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority. 
Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than 


68 


RASSELAS. 


they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set 
themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently 
forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner. 

Imlac then endeavored to gain some intelligence by private 
agents. He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge 
of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence 
with their chiefs, and who readily undertook the recovery of 
Pekuah. Of these, some were furnished with money for their 
journey and came back no more ; some were liberally paid for 
accounts which a few days discovered to be false. Put the 
princess would not suffer any means, however improbable, to 
be left untried. While she was doing something, she kept her 
hope alive. As one expedient failed, another was suggested ; 
when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was 
despatched to a different quarter. 

Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had 
been heard ; the hopes which they had endeavored to raise in 
each other grew more languid ; and the princess, when she 
saw nothing more to be tried, sunk down inconsolable in 
hopeless dejection. A thousand times she reproached herself 
with the easy compliance by which she permitted her favorite 
to stay behind her. “ Had not my fondness,” said she, “ les- 
sened my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her 
terrors. She ought to have feared me more than spectres. A 
severe look would have overpowered her ; a peremptory com- 
mand would have compelled obedience. Why did foolish 
indulgence prevail upon me ? Why did I not speak, and refuse 
to hear ? ” 

“ Great princess,” said Imlac, “ do not reproach yourself for 
your virtue, or consider that as blamable by which evil has 
accidentally been caused. Your tenderness for the timidity 
of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according 
to our duty, we commit the event to Him by whose laws our 
actions are governed, and who will suffer none to be finally 
punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, 
whether natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, 
we withdraw from the direction of superior wisdom, and take 
all consequences upon ourselves. Man cannot so far know 
the connection of causes and events, as that he may venture 
to do wrong in order to do right. When we pursue our end 
by lawful means, we may always console our miscarriage by 
the hope of future recompense. When we consult only our 
own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by over- 
leaping the settled boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot 


jRASSELAS. 


69 


be happy even by success, because we cannot escape the 
consciousness of our fault : but, if we miscarry, the disap- 
pointment is irremediably imbittered. How comfortless is the 
sorrow of him who feels at once the pangs of guilt, and the 
vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him ! 

“ Consider, princess, what would have been your condition, 
if the lady Pekuah had entreated to accompany, and, being 
compelled to stay in the tents, had been carried away ; or how 
you would have borne the thought if you had forced her into 
the Pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies of 
terror ? ” 

“ Had either happened,” said Nekayah, “ I could not have 
endured life till now : I should have been tortured to madness 
by the remembrance of such cruelty, or must have pined 
away in abhorence of myself.” 

“ This, at least,” said Imlac, is the present reward of vir- 
tuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to 
repent it.” 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE PRINCESS LANGUISHES FOR WANT OF PEKUAH. 

Nekeyah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no 
evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with con- 
sciousness of wrong. She was from that time delivered from 
the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pen- 
siveness and gloomy tranquility. She sat from morning to 
evening recollecting all that had been done or said by her 
Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on which Pekuah 
had set an accidental value, and which might recall to mind 
any little incident or careless conversation. The sentiments 
of her, whom she now expected to see no more, were treas- 
ured in her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no 
other end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have 
been the opinion and counsel of Pekuah. 

The women by whom she was attended knew nothing of her 
real condition, and therefore she could not talk to them but 
with caution and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity, 
having no great desire to collect notions which she had not 
convenience of uttering. Rasselas endeavored first to comfort, 
and afterwards to divert her ; he hired musicians, to whom 
she seemed to listen, but did not hear them ; and procured 


7 ° 


EASSELAS. 


masters to instruct her in various arts, whose lectures, when 
they visited her again, were again to be repeated. She had 
lost her taste of pleasure and her ambition of excellence. 
And her mind, though forced into short excursions, always 
recurred to the image of her friend. 

Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his 
inquiries, and was asked every night whether he had yet heard 
of Pekuah, till, not being able to return the princess the 
answer that she desired, he was less and less willing to come 
into her presence. She observed his backwardness, and com- 
manded him to attend her. “*You are not,” said she, “ to 
confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I 
charge you with negligence, because I repine at your unsuccess- 
fulness. I do not much wonder at your absence : I know that 
the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid 
the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome 
alike to the wretched and the happy ; for who would cloud, 
by adventitious grief, the short gleams of gayety which life 
allows us ? or who, that is struggling under his own evils, will 
add to them the miseries of another ? 

“ The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any 
longer by the sighs of Nekeyah : my search after happiness is 
now at an end. I am resolved to retire from the world with 
all its flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in solitude 
without any other care than to 'compose my thoughts, and 
regulate my hours by a constant succession of innocent occu- 
pations, till with a mind purified from all earthly desires, I 
shall enter into that state to which all are hastening, and in 
which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah.” 

“ Do not entangle your mind,” said Imlac, “ by irrevocable 
determinations, nor increase the burden of life by a voluntary 
accumulation of misery: the weariness of retirement will 
continue or increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgotten. 
That you have been deprived of one pleasure is no very good 
reason for rejection of the rest.” 

“ Since Pekuah was taken from me,” said the princess, “ I 
have no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one 
to love or trust has little to hope. She wants the radical 
principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow, that^what 
satisfaction this world can afford must arise from the conjunc- 
tion of wealth, knowledge, and goodness : wealth is nothing 
but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is 
communicated : they must therefore be imparted to others, 
and to whom could I now delight to impart them ? Goodness 


S ASS E LAS. 


7 * 


affords the only comfort which can be enjoyed without a 
partner and goodness may be practiced in retirement.” 

“ How far solitude may admit goodness, or advance it, I shall 
not,” replied Imlac, “dispute at present. Remember the 
confession of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into 
the world when the image of your companion has left your 
thoughts.” — “ That time,” said Nekayah, “ will never come. 
The generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness, and the 
faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah will always be more missed 
as I shall live longer to see vice and folly.” 

“ The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity,” 
said Imlac, “ is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the 
new-created earth, who, when the first night came upon them, 
supposed that day would never return. When the clouds of 
sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can 
imagine how they will be dispelled : yet a new day succeeded 
to the night, and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. 
But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort do 
as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes 
when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual 
flux ; something is hourly lost, and something acquired. To 
lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital 
powers remain uninjured nature will find the means of repara- 
tion. Distance .has the same effect on the mind as on the eye : 
and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we 
leave behind us is ahvays lessening, and that which we approach 
increasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate ; it will 
grow muddy for want of motion : commit yourself again to the 
current of the world ; Pekuah will vanish by degrees ; you will 
meet in your way some other favorite, or learn to diffuse your- 
self in general conversation.” 

“ At least,” said the prince, “ do not despair before all 
remedies have been tried ; the inquiry after the unfortunate 
lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater 
diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait a year 
for the event, without any unalterable resolution.” 

Nekeyah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the 
promise to her brother, who had been advised by Imlac to 
require it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining 
Pekuah ; but he supposed, that if he could secure the interval 
of a year, the princess would then be in no danger of a 
cloister. 


72 


EASSELAS. 


\ 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

PEKUAH IS STILL REMEMBERED. THE PROGRESS OF SORROW. 

Nekeyah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery 
of her favorite, and having, by her promise, set her intention 
of retirement at a distance, began imperceptibly to return to 
common cares and common, pleasures. She rejoiced without 
her own consent at the suspension of her sorrows, and some- 
times caught herself with indignation in the act of turning 
away her mind from the remembrance of her, whom she yet 
resolved never to forget. 

She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation 
on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks 
retired constantly at the time fixed, and returned with her 
eyes swollen and her countenance clouded. By degrees she 
grew less scrupulous, and suffered any important and pressing 
avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She then yielded 
to less occasions ; sometimes forgot what she was indeed 
afraid to remember, and at last wholly released herself from 
the duty of periodical affliction. 

Her real love of Pekuah was not yet diminished. A thou- 
sand occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand 
wants, which nothing but the confidence of friendship can 
supply, made her frequently regretted. She therefore solicited 
Imlac never to desist from inquiry, and to leave no art of 
intelligence untried, that at least she might have the comfort 
of knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or sluggish- 
ness. “Yet what,” said she, “is to be expected from our 
pursuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, 
that happiness itself is the cause of misery? Why should we 
endeavor to attain that of which the possession cannot be 
secured. I shall henceforward fear to yield my heart to 
excellence, however bright, or fondness, however tender, lest 
I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah.” 


RASSELAS. 


73 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

THE PRINCESS HEARS NEWS OF PEKUAH. 

In seven months, one of the messengers, who had been 
sent away upon the day when the promise was drawn from the 
princess, returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from the 
borders of Nubia, with an account that Pekuah was in the 
hand of an Arab chief, who possessed a castle or fortress on 
the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was 
plunder, was willing to restore her with her two attendants, 
for two hundred ounces of gold. 

The price was no subject of debate. The princess was in 
ecstasies when she heard that her favorite was alive, and 
might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of 
delaying for a moment Pekuah’s happiness or her own, but 
entreated her brother to send back the messenger with the 
sum required. Imlac being consulted was not very confident 
of the veracity of the relator, and was still more doubtful of 
the Arab’s faith, who might, if he were too liberally trusted, 
detain at once the money and the captives. He thought it 
dangerous to put themselves in the power of the Arab, by 
going into his district, and could not expect that the rover 
would so much expose himself as to come into the lower 
country, where he might be seized by the forces of the Bassa. 

It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. But 
Imlac, after some deliberation, directed the messenger to 
propose that Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen to 
the monastery of St. Anthony, which is situated in the deserts 
of Upper Egypt, where she should be met by the same number, 
and her ransom should be paid. 

That no time might be lost, as they expected that the pro- 
posal would not be refused, they immediately began their 
journey to the monastery ; and when they arrived, Imlac went 
forward with the former messenger to the Arab’s fortress. 
Rasselas was desirous to go with them ; but neither his sister 
nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, according to the 
custom of his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with 
great exactness to those who put themselves into his power, 
and, in a few days brought Pekuah with her maids, by easy 
journeys, to the place appointed, where, receiving the stipu- 


74 


J? A SSL' LAS. 


lated price, he restored her with great respect to liberty and 
her friends, and undertook to conduct them back towards 
Cairo, beyond all danger of robbery or violence. 

The princess and her favorite embraced each other with 
transport too violent to be expressed, and went out together 
to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange 
professions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours 
they returned into the refectory of the convent, where, in the 
presence of the prior and his brethren, the prince required 
of Pekuah the history of her adventures. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE ADVENTURES OF THE LADY PEKUAH. 

“ At what time and in what manner I was forced away,” 
said Pekuah, “ your servants have told you. The suddenness 
of the event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather 
stupefied than agitated with any passion of either fear or 
sorrow. My confusion was increased by the speed and tumult 
of our flight, while we were followed by the Turks, who, as it 
seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid * of 
those whom they made a show of menacing. 

u When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger they 
slackened their course, and as I was less harassed by exter- 
nal violence, I began to feel more uneasiness in my mind. 

After some time we stopped near a spring, shaded with 
trees, in a pleasant meadow, where w r e were set upon the 
ground, . and offered such refreshments as our masters 
were partaking. I was suffered to sit with my maids apart 
from the rest, and none attempted to comfort or insult us. 

Here I first began to feel the full weight of my misery. 

The girls sat weeping in silence, and from time to time 
looked on me for succor. I knew not to what condition we 
were doomed, nor could conjecture where would be the place 
of our captivity, or whence to draw any hope of deliverance. 

I was in the hands of robbers and savages and had no 
reason to suppose that their pity was more than their justice, 
or that they would forbear the gratification of any ardor of 
desire or caprice of cruelty. 1, however, kissed my maids, 
and endeavored to pacify them by remarking, that we were 
yet treated with decency, and that, since we were now carried 
beyond pursuit, there was no danger of violence to our lives. 


AASSXLAS. 


75 


“ When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids 
clung round me, and refused to be parted, but I commanded 
them not to irritate those who had us in their power. We 
travelled the remaining part of the day through an unfre- 
quented and pathless country, and came by moonlight to the 
side of a hill, where the rest of the troops were stationed. 

Their tents were pitched and their fires kindled, and our 
chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his 
dependants. 

“We were received into a large tent, where we found 
women who had attended their husbands in the expedition. 

They set before us the supper which they had provided, 
and I ate it rather to encourage my maids than to com- 
ply with any appetite of my own. When the meat was 
taken away they spread the carpets for repose. I was 
weary, and hoped to find in sleep that remission of distress 
which nature seldom denies. Ordering myself therefore to 
be undressed, I observed that the women looked very 
earnestly upon me, not expecting, I suppose to see me so 
submissively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, 
they were apparently struck with the splendor of my 
clothes, and one of them timorously laid her hand upon 
the embroidery. She then went out, and in a short time 
came back with another woman, who seemed to be of 
higher rank and greater authority. She did, at her entrance, 
the usual act of reverence, and, taking me by the hand, 
placed me in a smaller tent, spread with finer carpets, 
where I spent the night quietly with my maids. 

“ In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the 
chief of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive 
him, and he bowed with great respect. ‘ Illustrious lady/ 
said he, ‘my fortune is better than I had presumed to 
hope ; I am told by my women, that I have a princess in my 
camp.’ — ‘ Sir/ answered I, ‘ your women have deceived them- 
selves and you ; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger 
who intended soon to have left this country, in which I am now 
to be imprisoned forever/ — ‘ Whoever, or whencesover you are/ 
returned the Arab, ‘your dress and that of your servants, show 
your rank to be high, and your wealth to be great. Why 
should you, who can so easily procure your ransom, think 
yourself in danger of perpetual captivity ? The purpose of 
my incursions is to increase my riches, or, more properly, to 
gather tribute. The sons of Ishmael are the natural and 
hereditary lords of this part of the continent, which is 


y6 


RASSELAS. 


usurped by late invaders and low-born tyrants, from whom we 
are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to justice. 
The violence of war admits no distinction ; the lance, that is 
lifted at guilt and power, will sometimes fall on innocence 
and gentleness.” 

“ ‘ How little,’ said I, ‘ did I expect that yesterday it should 
have fallen upon me ! ’ 

“ ‘ Misfortunes,’ answered the Arab, ‘ should always be ex- 
pected. If the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, 
excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But the 
angels of affliction spread their toils alike for the virtuous and 
the wicked, for the mighty and the mean. Do not be discon- 
solate : I am not one of the lawless and cruel rovers of the 
desert; I know the rules of civil life : I will fix your ransom, 
give a passport to your messenger, and perform my stipula- 
tion with nice punctuality.’ 

“ You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy, 
and, finding that his predominant passion was desire of money, 
I began now to think my danger less, for I knew that no 
sum would be thought too great for the release of Pekuah. I 
told him that he should have no reason to charge me with in- 
gratitude, if I was used with kindness, and that any ransom 
which could be expected from a maid of common rank would 
be paid, but that he must not persist to rate me as a princess. 
He said he would consider what he should demand, and then, 
smiling, bowed and retired. 

“ Soon after the women came about me, each contending to 
be more officious than the other, and my maids themselves 
were served with reverence. We travelled onward by short 
journeys. On the fourth c|^y the chief told me, that my ran- 
som must be two hundred ounces of gold ; which I not only 
promised him, but told him that I would add fifty more, if I 
and my maids were honorably treated. 

“ I never knew the power of gold before. From that time 
I was the leader of the troop. The march of every day was 
longer or shorter as I commanded, and the tents were pitched 
where I chose to rest. We now had camels and other con- 
veniences for travel, my own women were always at my side, 
and I amused myself with observing the manners of the va- 
grant nations, and with viewing remains of ancient edifices, 
with which these deserted countries appear to have been, in 
some distant age, lavishly embellished. 

“ The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate : he 
’was able to travel by the stars or the compass,, and had 


XASSELAS. 


77 


marked, in his erratic expeditions, such places as are most 
worthy the notice of a passenger. He observed to me, that 
buildings are always best preserved in places little frequented 
and difficult of access ; for, when once a country declines 
from its primitive splendor, the more inhabitants are left, 
the quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more 
easily than quarries, and palaces and temples will be de- 
molished, to make stables of granite, and cottages of por- 
phyry.” 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE ADVENTURES OF PEKUAH CONTINUED. 

“ We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, 
whether, as our chief pretended, for my gratification, or, as I 
rather suspected, for some convenience of his own. I en- 
deavored to appear contented where sullenness and resent- 
ment would have been of no use, and that endeavor conduced 
much to the calmness of my mind ; but my heart was always 
with Nekeyah, and the troubles of the night much overbal- 
anced the amusements of the day. My women, who threw 
all their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease 
from the time when they saw me treated with respect, and 
gave themselves up to the incidental alleviations of our fatigue 
without solicitude or sorrow. I was pleased with their pleas- 
ure, and animated with their confidence. My condition had 
lost much of its terror, since I found that the Arab ranged 
the country merely for riches. Avarice is a uniform and tract- 
able vice : other intellectual distempers are different in dif- 
ferent constitutions of mind ; that which soothes the pride of 
one will offend the pride of another ; but to the favor of the 
covetous there is a ready way ; bring money, and nothing is 
denied. 

“ At last we came to the dwelling of our chief, a strong 
and spacious house built with stone in an island of the Nile, 
which lies, as I was told, under the tropic. ‘ Lady,’ said the 
Arab, * you shall rest after your journey a few weeks in this 
place, where you are to consider yourself as sovereign. My 
occupation is w^ar : I have therefore chosen this obscure resi- 
dence, from which I can issue unexpected, and to which I can 
retire unpursued. You may now repose in security : here are 
few pleasures, but here is no danger.’ He then led me into 


78 


RASSELAS. 


the inner apartments, and, seating me on the richest couch, 
bowed to the ground. His women, who considered me as a 
rival, looked on me with malignity ; but being soon informed 
that I was a great lady detained only for my ransom, they be- 
gan to vie with each other in obsequiousness and reverence. 

“ Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy 
liberty, I was for some days diverted from impatience by the 
novelty of the place. The turrets overlooked the country to a 
great distance, and afforded a view of many windings of the 
stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another, as 
the course of the sun varied the splendor of the prospect, and 
saw many things which I had never seen before. The croco- 
diles and river-horses are common in this unpeopled region, 
and I often looked upon them with terror, though I knew that 
they could not hurt me. For some time I expected to see 
mermaids and tritons, which, as Imlac had told me, the Euro- 
pean travellers have stationed in the Nile ; but no such 
beings ever appeared, and the Arab, when I inquired after 
them, laughed at my credulity. 

“At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set 
apart for celestial observations, where he endeavored to teach 
me the names and courses of the stars. I had no great incli- 
nation to this study, but an appearance of attention was neces- 
sary to please my instructor, who valued himself for his skill, 
and, in a little while, I found some employment requisite to 
beguile the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always 
amidst the same objects. I was weary of looking in the morn- 
ing on things from which I had turned away weary in the 
evening ; I therefore was at last willing to observe the stars 
rather than do nothing, but could not always compose my 
thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekeyah, when 
others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon after the 
Arab went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure 
was to talk with my maids about the accident by which we 
were carried away, and the happiness that we should all 
enjoy at the end of our captivity.” 

“ There were women in your Arab’s fortress,” said the prin- 
cess, “ why did you not make them your companions, enjoy 
their conversation, and partake their diversions ? In a place 
where they found business or amusement, why should you 
alone sit corroded with idle melancholy ? or why could not 
you bear for a few months that condition to which they were 
condemned for life ? ” 

“ The diversions of the women,” answered Pekuah, “ were 


RASSELAS . 


79 


only childish play, by which the mind, accustomed to stronger 
operations, could not be kept busy. I could do all which they 
delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive, while my intel- 
lectual faculties were flown to Cairo. They ran from room to 
room, as a bird hops from wire to wire in his cage. They 
danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a meadow. 
One sometimes pretended to be hurt, that the rest might be 
alanned ; or hid herself, that another might seek her. Part of 
their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies that 
floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms 
into which clouds broke in the sky. 

“ Their business was only needlework, in which I and my 
maids sometimes helped them ; but you know that the mind 
will easily straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that 
captivity and absence from Nekeyah could receive solace from 
silken flowers. 

“ Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conver- 
sation ; for of what could they be expected to talk ? They had 
seen nothing : for they had lived from early youth in that 
narrow spot : of what they had not seen they could have no 
knowledge, for they could not read. They had no ideas but of 
the few things that were within their view, and had hardly 
names for anything but their clothes and their food. As I 
bore a superior character, I was often called to terminate their 
quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I could. If it could 
have amused me to hear the complaints of each against the 
rest, I might have been often detained by long stories ; but 
the motives of their animosity were so small that I could not 
listen without interrupting the tale.” 

“ How, * said Rasselas, “ can the Arab, whom you repre- 
sented as a man of more than common accomplishments, take 
any pleasure in his seraglio, when it is filled only with women 
like these ? Are they exquisitely beautiful ? ” 

“ They do not,” said Pekuah, “ want that unaffecting and 
ignoble beauty which may subsist without sprightliness or 
sublimity, without energy of thought or dignity of virtue. But 
to a man like the Arab such beauty was only a flower casually 
plucked and carelessly thrown away. Whatever pleasures he 
might find among them, they were not those of friendship or 
society. When they were playing about him, he looked on 
them "with inattentive superiority ; when they vied for his 
regard, he sometimes turned away disgusted. As they had no 
knowledge, their talk could take nothing from the tediousness 
•f life ; as they had no choice, their fondness, or appearance 


8o 


RASSELAS. 


of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor gratitude : he 
was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman 
who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard, 
of which he could never know the sincerity, and which he 
might often perceive to be exerted, not so much to delight him 
as to pain a rival. That which he gave, and they received, as 
love, was only a careless distribution of superfluous time, such 
love as man can bestow upon that which he despises, such as 
* has neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow.” 

“ You have reason, lady, to think yourself happy,” said 
Imlac, “ that you have been thus easily dismissed. How 
could a mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, in an intel- 
lectual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah’s conversa- 
tion ? ” 

“ I am inclined to believe,” answered Pekuah, “ that he 
was for some time in suspense ; for notwithstanding his 
promise, whenever I proposed to dispatch a messenger to 
Cairo, he found some excuse for delay. While I was 
detained in his house he made many excursions into the 
neighboring countries, and, perhaps, he would have refused 
to discharge me,, had his plunder been equal to his wishes. 
He returned always courteous, related his adventures, 
delighted to hear my observations, and endeavored to advance 
my acquaintance with the stars. When I importuned him to 
send away my letters, he soothed me with professions of 
honor and sincerity : and, when I could be no longer decently 
denied, put his troop again in motion, and left me to govern 
in his absence. I was much afflicted by this studied procras- 
tination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be forgotten ; 
that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an 
island of the Nile. 

“ I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little 
to entertain him that he for a while more frequently talked 
with my maids. That he should fall in love with them, or 
with me, might have been equally fatal, and I was not much 
pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety was not 
long ; for, as I recovered some degree of cheerfulness, he 
returned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former 
Uneasiness. 

“ He still delayed to send for my ransom, and would, 
perhaps, never have determined, had not your agent found 
his way to him. The gold, which he would not fetch, 
he could not reject when it was offered. He hastened 
to prepare for our journey hither, like a man delivered from 


A’ASSELAS. 


Si 


the pain of an intestine conflict. I took leave of my 
companions in the house, who dismissed me with cold 
indifference.” 

Nekeyah, having heard her favorite’s relation, rose and 
embraced her ; and Rasselas gave her a hundred ounces of 
gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were 
promised. 


CHAPTER XL. 

THE HISTORY OF A MAN OF LEARNING. 

They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at find- 
ing themselves together that none of them went much abroad. 

The prince began to love learning, and one day declared to 
Imlac, that he intended to devote himself to science, and 
pass the rest of his days in literary solitude. 

“ Before you make your final choice,” answered Imlac, 
“ you aught to examine its hazzards, and converse with some 
of those who have grown old in the company of themselves. I 
have just left the observatory of one of the most learned as- 
tronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in unwearied 
attention to the motions and appearances of the celestial 
bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He 
admits a few friends once a month to hear his deductions and 
enjoy his discoveries. I was introduced as a man of knowl- 
edge worthy of his notice. Men of various ideas and fluent 
conversation are commonly welcome to those whose thoughts 
have been long fixed upon a single point, and who find the 
images of other things stealing away. I delighted him with 
my remarks ; he smiled at the narrative of my travels ; and 
was glad to forget the constellations, and descend for a 
moment into the lower world. 

“ On the next day of vacation I renewed my visit, and was 
so fortunate as to please him again. He relaxed from that 
time the severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my 
own choice. I found him always busy, and always glad to be 
relieved. As each knew much that the other was desirous 
of learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. 
I perceived that I had every day more of his confidence, 
and always found new cause for admiration in the profundity 
of his mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory is capa- 
cious and retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his 
expression clear. 

6 


82 


RASSELAS. 


“ His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning. 
His deepest researches and most favorite studies are willingly 
interrupted for an opportunity of doing good by his counsel 
or his riches. To his closest retreat, at his most busy mo- 
ments, all are admitted that want his assistance : ‘ For, 
though I exclude idleness and pleasure, I will never,’ says he, 
‘ bar my doors against charity. To man is permitted the con- 
templation of the skies, but the practice of virtue is com- 
manded.’ ” 

“ Surely,” said the princess, “ this man is happy.” 

“ I visited him,” said Imlac, “ with more and more fre- 
quency, and was every time more enamored of his conversa- 
tion ; he was sublime without haughtiness, courteous without 
formality, and communicative without ostentation. I was at 
first, great princess, of your opinion, thought him the happiest 
of mankind, and often congratulated him on the blessing that 
he enjoyed. He seemed to hear nothing with indifference but 
the praises of his condition, to which he always returned a 
general answer, and diverted the conversation to some other 
topic. 

“ Amidst this willingness to be pleased and labor to please, 
I had quickly reason to imagine that some painful sentiment 
pressed upon his mind. He often looked up earnestly towards 
the sun, and let his voice fall in the midst of his discourse. 
He would sometimes, when we were alone, gaze upon me in 
silence with the air of a man who longed to speak what he 
was yet resolved to suppress. He would often send for me, 
with vehement injunctions of haste, though, when I came to 
him, he had nothing extraordinary to say. And sometimes, 
when I was leaving him, he would call me back, pause a few 
moments, and then dismiss me.” 


CHAPTER XLI. 

THE ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS THE CAUSE OF HIS UNEASINESS. 

“ At last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. 
We were sitting together last night in the turret of his house, 
watching the emersion of a satellite of Jupiter. A sudden 
tempest clouded the sky, and disappointed our observation. 
We sat awhile silent in the dark, and then he addressed him- 
self to me in these words : — ‘ Imlac, I have long considered 
thy friendship as the greatest blessing of my life. Integrity 


KASSELAS. 


*3 

without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge with- 
out integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I have found in 
thee all the qualities requisite for trust, benevolence, experi- 
ence, and fortitude. I have long discharged an office which I 
must soon quit at the call of nature, and shall rejoice, in the 
hour of imbecility and pain, to devolve it upon thee.’ ” 

“ I thought myself honored by this testimony, and protested, 
that whatever would conduce to his happiness would add like- 
wise to mine. 

“ Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. 
I have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather 
and the distribution of the seasons ; the sun has listened to 
my dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction ; 
the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile 
has overflowed at my command ; I have restrained the rage of 
the dog-star, and mitigated the fervers of the crab. The 
winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto refused 
my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial 
tempest, which I haye found myself unable to prohibit or re- 
strain. I have administered this great office with exact 
justice, and made to the different nations of the earth an im- 
partial dividend of rain and sunshine. What must have been 
the misery of half the globe if I had limited the clouds to 
particular regions, or confined the sun to either side of the 
equator ? ’ ” 


CHAPTER XLII. 

THE OPINION OF THE ASTRONOMER IS EXPLAINED AND 
JUSTIFIED. 

“ I suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of 
the room, some tokens of amazement and doubt, for, after a 
short pause, he proceeded thus : 

“ ‘ Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend 
me ; for I am, probably, -the first of human beings to whom 
this trust has been imparted. Nor do I know whether to 
deem the distinction a reward or punishment ; since I have 
possessed it I have been far less happy than before, and 
nothing but the consciousness of good intention could have 
enabled me to support the weariness of unremitted vigi- 
lance.’ 


>4 


KASSELAS. 


“ 1 How long, sir,’ said I, “ has this great office been in 
your hands ? ’ 

“ ‘ About ten years ago/ said he, ‘ my daily observations of 
the changes of the sky led me to consider whether, if I had 
the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon 
the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation fastened 
upon my mind, and I sat days and nights in imaginary do- 
minion, pouring upon this country and that the showers of 
fertility, and seconding every fall of rain with a due propor- 
tion of sunshine. I had yet only the will to do good, and did 
not imagine that I should ever have the power.” 

“ ‘ One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with 
heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain 
on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inunda- 
tion. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to 
fall ; and, by comparing the time of my command with that of 
the inundation, I found that the clouds had listened to my 
lips.’ 

“ ‘ Might not some other cause/ said I, ‘ produce this 
concurrence ? the Nile does not always rise on the same 
day.’ 

“ ‘ Do not believe/ said he with impatience, ‘ that such ob- 
jections could escape me : I reasoned long against my own 
conviction, and labored against truth with the utmost 
obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and 
should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like 
you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impos- 
sible, and the incredible from the false.’ 

“ ‘ Why, sir,’ said I, ‘ do you call that incredible which you 
know, or think you know, to be true ? ’ 

“ ‘ Because,’ said he, ‘ I cannot prove it by any external 
evidence ; and I know too well the laws of demonstration to 
think that my conviction ought to influence another, who can- 
not, like me, be conscious of its force. I therefore shall not 
attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is sufficient that I 
feel this power, that I have long possessed, and every day ex- 
erted it. But the life of man is short, the infirmities of age 
increase upon me, and the time will soon come when the reg- 
lator of the year must mingle with the dust. The care of ap- 
pointing a successor has long disturbed me ; the night and 
the day have been spent in comparisons of all the characters 
which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found 
none so worthy as thyself.’ ” 


RASSELAS. 


Ss 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

THE ASTRONOMER LEAVES IMLAC HIS DIRECTIONS. 

“ ‘ Hear, therefore, what I shall impart with attention, such 
as the welfare of a world requires. If the. task of a king be 
considered as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, 
to whom he cannot do much good or harm, what must be the 
anxiety of him, on whom depends the action of the elements, 
and the great gifts of light and heat ? — Hear me, therefore, 
with attention. 

“ ‘ I have diligently considered the position of the earth 
and sun, and formed innumerable schemes in which I 
changed their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the 
axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptic of the 
sun : but I have found it impossible to make a disposition by 
which the world may be advantaged ; what one region gains 
another looses by an imaginable alternation, even without 
considering the distant parts of the solar system with which 
we are acquainted. Do not, therefore, in thy administration 
of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation ; do not please 
thyself with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned 
to all future ages, by disordering the seasons. The memory 
of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become 
thee to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other 
countries of rain to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile is- 
sufficient.’ 

“ I promised, that when I possessed the power, I would 
use it with inflexible integrity ; and he dismissed me, pressing 
my hand. ‘ My heart,’ said he, ‘ will be now at rest, and my 
benevolence will no more destroy my quiet ; I have found a 
man of wisdom and virtue, to whom I can cheerfully bequeath 
the inheritance of the sun.”’ 

The prince heard this narration with very serious regard ; 
but the princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with' 
laughter. “ Ladies,” said Imlac, “ to mock the heaviest of 
human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can 
attain this man’s knowledge and few practise his virtues ; but 
all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our 
present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain 
continuance of reason.” 


The princess was recollected, and the favorite was abashed. 
Rasselas, more deeply alfected, inquired of Imlac, whether he 
thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they 
were contracted ? 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE DANGEROUS PREVALENCE OF IMAGINATION. 

“ Disorders of intellect,” answered Imlac, “ happen much 
more often than superficial observers will easily believe. 
Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, no human mind 
is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does 
not sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate 
his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come 
and go at his command. No man will be found in whose 
mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force 
him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. 
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity ; but 
while this power is such as we can control and repress, 
it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation 
of the mental faculties : It is not pronounced madness but 
when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences 
speech or action. 

“ To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out 
upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too 
much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not 
always busy ; the labor of excogitation is too violent to last 
long ; the ardor of inquiry will sometimes give way to idle- 
ness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can di- 
vert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must 
conceive himself what he is not ; for who is pleased with what 
he is ? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and calls 
from all imaginable conditions that which for the present 
moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with im- 
possible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable 
dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all 
pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which na- 
ture and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. 

“ In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention ; 
all other intellectual gratifications are rejected ; the mind, in 
weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite concep- 
tion, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is 


RASSELAS ; 


S7 


offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign 
of fancy is confirmed ; she grows first imperious, and in time 
despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opin- 
ions fasten upon the mincl, and life passes in dreams of rap- 
ture or of anguish. 

“ This, sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the her- 
mit has confessed not always to promote goodness, and the 
astronomer’s misery has proved to be not always propitious to 
wisdom.” 

“ I will no more,” said the favorite, “ imagine myself the 
queen of Abyssinia. I have often spent the hours, which the 
princess gave to my own disposal, in adjusting ceremonies 
and regulating the court ; I have repressed the pride of the 
powerful, and granted the petitions of the poor ; I have built 
new palaces in more happy situations, planted groves upon 
the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the beneficence 
of royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had almost for- 
gotten to bow down before her.” 

“ And I,” said the princess, “ will not allow myself any 
more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have 
often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of 
pastoral employments, till I have, in my chamber, heard the 
winds whistle and the sheep bleat : sometimes freed the lamb 
entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook en- 
countered the w r olf. I have a dress like that of the village 
maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe, 
on which I play softly, and suppose myself followed by my 
flocks.” 

“ I will confess,” said the prince, “ an indulgence of fan- 
tastic delight more dangerous than yours. I have frequently 
endeavored to image the possibility of a perfect govern- 
ment, by which all wrong should be restrained, all vice re- 
formed, and all the subjects preserved in tranquility and in- 
nocence. This thought produced innumerable schemes of 
reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salu- 
tary edicts. This has been the sport, and sometimes the labor, 
of my solitude ; and I start, when I think with how little 
anguish I once supposed the death of my father and my 
brothers.” 

“ Such,” says Imlac, “ are the effect of visionary schemes. 
When we first form them we know them to be absurd, but 
familiarize them bv degrees, and in time lose sight of their 
folly.” 


XASSELAS. 


S3 


CHAPTER XLV. 

THEY DISCOURSE WITH AN OLD MAN. 

The evening was now far passed, and they rose to return 
home. As they walked along the bank of the Nile, delighted 
with the beams of the moon quivering on the water, they saw 
at a small distance an old man, whom the prince had often 
heard in the assembly of the sages. “ Yonder,” said he 
“ is one whose years have calmed his passions, but not 
clouded his reason : let us close the disquisitions of the night 
by inquiring what are his sentiments of his own state, that 
we may know whether youth alone is to struggle with vexa- 
tion, and whether any better hope remains for the latter part 
of life.” 

Here the sage approached and saluted them. They in- 
vited him to join their walk, and prattled awhile, as acquaint- 
ances that had unexpectedly met one another. The old man 
was cheerful and talkative, and the way seemed short in his 
company. He was pleased to find himself not disregarded, 
accompanied them to their house, and, at the prince’s request, 
entered with them. They placed him in the seat of honor, 
and set wine and conserves before him. 

“ Sir,” said the princess, “ an evening walk must give to a 
man of learning, like you, pleasures which ignorance and 
youth can hardly conceive. You know the qualities of the 
causes of all that you behold, the laws by which the river 
flows, the periods in which the planets perform their revolu- 
tions. Everything must supply you with contemplation, and 
renew the consciousness of your own dignity.” 

“ Lady,” answered he, “ let the gay and the vigorous expect 
pleasure in their excursions ; it is enough that age can obtain 
ease. To me the world has lost its novelty : I look round and 
see what I remember to have seen in happier days. I rest 
against a tree, and consider that in the same shade I once dis- 
puted upon the annual overflow of the Nile with a friend who 
is now silent in the grave. I cast my eyes upwards, fix them 
on the changing moon, and think with pain on the vicissitudes 
of life. I have ceased to take much delight in physical truth ; 
for what have I to do with those things which 1 am soon to 
leave ? ” 


EASSELAS. 


S9 

“ You may at least recreate yourself,” s^id Imlac, “ with 
the recollection of an honorable and useful life, and enjoy the 
praise which all agree to give you.” 

“ Praise,” said the sage, with a sigh, “ is to an old man an 
empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with 
the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honors 
of her husband. I have outlived my friends and my rivals. 
Nothing is now of much importance ; for I cannot extend my 
interest beyond myself. Youth is delighted with applause, 
because it is considered as the earnest of some future good, 
and because the prospect of life is far extended : but to 
me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there is little to 
be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be 
hoped from their affection or esteem. Something they may 
yet take away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would 
now be useless, and high employment would be pain. My 
retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of 
good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more 
lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave my great designs 
unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished. My mind 
is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose 
myself to tranquility : endeavor to abstract my thoughts from 
hopes and cares, which, though, reason knows them to be vain, 
still try to keep their old possession of the heart ; expect, with 
serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay : 
and hope to possess, in a better state, that happiness which 
here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have not 
attained.” 

He rose and went away, leaving his audience not much elated 
with the hope of long life. The prince consoled himself with 
remarking, that it was not reasonable to be disappointed by 
this account ; for age had never been considered as the 
season of felicity ; and if it was possible to be easy in decline 
and weakness, it was likely that the days of vigor and alacrity 
might be happy : that the noon of life could be bright if the 
evening could be calm. 

The princess suspected that age was querulous and malig- 
nant, and delighted to repress the expectations of those who 
had newly entered the world. She had seen the possessors of 
estates look with envy on their heirs, and known many who 
enjoyed pleasure no longer than they could confine it to 
themselves. 

Pekuah conjectured that the man was older than he ap- 
peared, and was willing to impute his complaints to delirious 


90 


RASSELAS. 


dejection ; or else supposed that he had been unfortunate, 
and was therefore discontented ; “ For nothing,” said she, 
“ is more common than to call our own condition the con- 
dition of life.” 

Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled 
at the comforts which they could so readily procure to 
themselves, and remembered, that at the same age he was 
equally confident of unmingled prosperity, and equally fer- 
tile of consolitary expedients. He forbore to force upon 
them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself would too soon 
impress. The princess and her lady retired ; the madness of 
the astronomer hung upon their minds, and they desired 
Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next morning the 
rising of the sun. 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE PRINCESS AND FEKUAH VISIT THE ASTRONOMER. 

The princess and Pekuah, having talked in private to 
Imlac’s astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable 
and so strange that they could not be satisfied without a 
nearer knowledge ; and Imlac was requested to find the 
means of bringing them together. 

This was somewhat difficult ; the philosopher had never re- 
ceived any visits from women, though he lived in a city that 
had in it many Europeans, who followed the manners of their 
own countries, and many from other parts of the world, that 
lived there with European liberty. The ladies would not be 
refused, and Several schemes were proposed for the accom- 
plishment of their design. It was proposed to introduce them 
as strangers in distress, to whom the sage was always acces- 
sible ; but, after some deliberation, it appeared that by this 
artifice no acquaintance could be formed, for their conversa- 
tion would be short, and they could not decently importune 
him often. “ This,” said Rasselas, “ is true ; but I have yet a 
stronger objection against the misrepresentation of your state. 
I have always considered it as treason against the great repub- 
lic of human nature to make any man’s virtues the means of 
deceiving him, whether on great or little occasions. All im- 
posture weakens confidence and chills benevolence. When the 
sage finds that you are not what you seemed, he will feel the 
resentment natural to a man who, conscious of great abilities, 


RASSELAS . 


9i 


discovers that he has been tricked by understandings meaner 
than his own ; and, perhaps, the distrust, which he can never 
afterwards wholly lay aside, may stop the voice of counsel and 
close the hand of charity ; and where will you find the power 
of restoring his benefactions to mankind or his peace to him- 
self ? ” 

To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope 
that their curiosity would subside ; but, next day, Pekuah 
told him, she had now found an honest pretence for a visit to 
the astronomer, for she would solicit permission to continue 
under him the studies in which she had been initiated by the 
Arab, and the princess might go with her either as a fellow- 
student, or because a woman could not decently come alone. 
“ I am afraid,” said Imlac, “ that he will be soon weary of 
your company ; men advanced far in knowledge do not love 
to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that 
even of the elements, as he will deliver them connected 
with inferences and mingled with reflections, you are a very 
capable auditress.” — “ That,” said Pekuah, “ must be my 
care ; I ask of you only to take me thither. My knowledge 
is, perhaps, more than you imagine it ; and, by concurring 
always with opinions, I shall make him think it greater than 
it is.” 

The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told 
that a foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had 
heard of his reputation, and was desirous to become his 
scholar. The uncommonness of the proposal raised at once 
his surprise and curiosity : and when, after a short delibera- 
tion, he consented to admit her, he could not stay without im- 
patience till the next day. 

The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were at- 
tended by Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see 
himself approached with respect by persons of so splendid an 
appearance. In the exchange of the first civilities he was 
timorous and bashful ; but when the talk became regular, he 
recollected his powers, and justified the character which Imlac 
had given. Inquiring of Pekuah, what could have turned her 
inclination towards astronomy ? he received from her a history 
of her adventure at the Pyramid, and of the time passed in 
the Arab’s island. She told her tale with ease and elegance, 
and her conversation took possession of his heart. The dis- 
course was then turned to astronomy : Pekuah displayed what 
she knew : he looked upon her as a prodigy cf genius, and 


92 


RASSELAS. 


entreated her not to desist from a study which she had so 
happily begun. 

They came again and again, and were every time more wel- 
come than before. The sage endeavored to amuse them, that 
they might prolong their visits, for he found his thoughts grow 
brighter in their company ; the clouds of solicitude vanished by 
degrees, as he forced himself to entertain them ; and he 
grieved when he was left at their departure to his old employ- 
ment of regulating the seasons. 

The princess and her favorite had now watched his lips for 
several months, and could not catch a single word from which 
they could judge whether he continued, or not, in the opinion 
of his preternatural commission. They often contrived to 
bring him to an open declaration : but he easily eluded all 
their attacks, and on which side soever they pressed him es- 
caped from them to some other topic. 

As their familiarity increased, they invited him often to the 
house of Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary 
respect. He began gradually to delight in sublunary pleasures. 
He came early, and departed late ; labored to recommend 
himself by assiduity and compliance : excited their curiosity 
after new arts, that they might still want his assistance ; and 
when they made any excursion of pleasure or inquiry, en- 
treated to attend them. 

By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the prince 
and his sister were convinced that he might be trusted with- 
out danger ; and, lest he should draw any false hopes from 
the civilities which he received, discovered to him their con- 
dition, with the motives of their journey ; and required his 
opinion on the choice of life. 

“ Of the various conditions which the world spreads before 
you, which you shall prefer,” said the sage, “ I am not able to 
instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have 
passed my time in study without experience ; in the attainment 
of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely use- 
ful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense 
of all the common comforts of life ; I have missed the endear- 
ing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of 
domestic tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives 
above other students, they have been accompanied with fear, 
disquiet, and scrupulosity : but even of these prerogatives, 
whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts have been diver- 
sified by more intercourse with the world, begun to question 
the reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing 


RASSELAS. 


93 


dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries 
have ended in error, and that I have suffered much, and suf- 
fered it in vain.” 

Imlac was delighted to find that the sage’s understanding 
was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him 
from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling them, 
and reason should recover its original influence. 

From this time the astronomer was received into familiar 
friendship, and partook of all their projects and pleasures : his 
respect kept him attentive, and the activity of Rasselas did 
not leave much time unengaged. Something was always to be 
done ; the day was spent in making observations, which fur- 
nished talk for the evening, and the evening was closed with a 
scheme for the morrow. 

The sage confessed to Imlac, that since he had mingled in 
the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession 
of amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over 
the skies fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less 
to an opinion which he never could prove to others, and which 
he now found subject to variation, from causes in which reason 
had no part. “ If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours,” 
said he, “ my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and 
my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence ; 
but they are soon disentangled by the prince’s conversation, 
and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am 
like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by 
a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in the 
dark ; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the terrors 
which he knows that when it is light he shall feel no more. 
But I am sometimes afraid lest I indulge my quiet by criminal 
negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which 
I am intrusted. If I favor myself in a known error, or am 
determined by my own ease in a doubtful question of this 
importance, how dreadful is my crime ! ” 

“ No disease of the imagination,” answered Imlac, “ is so 
difficult of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of 
guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, 
and so often shift their places that the illusions of one are not 
distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents 
images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when 
they give it pain ; but when melancholic notions take the form 
of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition, 
because we are afraid to exclude or banish them. For this 


94 


RASSELAS. 


reason the superstitious are often melancholy, and the melan- 
choly almost always superstitious. 

“ But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your 
better reason : the danger of neglect can be but as the proba- 
bility of the obligation, which when you consider it with free- 
dom, you find very little, and that little growing every day less. 
Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time 
to time, breaks in upon you : when scruples importune you, 
which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand 
to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah, and keep this 
thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the 
moss of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor vice as 
that you should be singled out for supernatural favors or 
afflictions.” 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPIC. 

“ All this,” said the astronomer, “ I have often thought, 
but my reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontrol- 
lable and overwhelming idea that it durst not confide in its own 
decisions. I now see how fatally I betray my quiet, by suffer- 
ing chimeras to prey upon me in secret ; but melanholy shrinks 
from communication, and I never found a man before to whom 
I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of relief. 
I rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by yours, who 
are not easily deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to 
deceive. I hope that time and variety will dissipate the gloom 
that has so long surrounded me, and the latter part of my 
days will be spent in peace.” 

“ Your learning and virtue,” said Imlac, “ may justly give 
you hopes.’ 

Rasselas then entered with the princess and Pekuah, and 
inquired whether they had contrived any new diversion for 
the next day ? “ Such,” said Nekeyah, “ is the state of life, 

that none are happy but by the anticipation of change : the 
change itself is nothing ; when we have made it, the next wish 
is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted ; let me 
see something to-morrow which I never saw before.” 

“Variety,” said Rasselas, “is so necessary to content, that 
even the happy valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its 
luxuries yet I could not forbear t* reproach myself with im- 


RASSELAS. 


95 


patience when I saw the monks of St. Anthony support, 
without complaint, a life, not of uniform delight, but uniform 
hardship.” 

“ Those men,” answered Imlac, “ are less wretched in their 
silent convent than the Abyssinian princes in their prison of 
pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an 
adequate and reasonable motive. Their labor supplies them 
with necessaries ; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is cer- 
tainly rewarded. Their devotion prepares them for another 
state, and reminds them of its approach while it fits them for 
it. Their time is regularly distributed : one duty succeeds 
another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of 
unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity. 
There is a certain task to be performed at an appropriated 
hour ; and their toils are cheerful because they consider them 
as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards 
endless felicity.” 

“ Do you think,” said Nekeyah, “ that the monastic rule is 
a more holy and less imperfect state than any other ? May 
not he equally hope for future happiness who converses 
openly with mankind, who succors the distressed by his 
charity, instructs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes 
by his industry to the general system of life ; even though he 
should omit some of the mortifications which are practised in 
the cloister, and allow himself such harmless delights as his 
condition may place within his reach ? ” 

“ This,” said Imlac, “ is a question which has long divided 
the wise and perplexed the good. I am afraid to decide on 
either part. He that lives well in the world is better than he 
that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is 
not able to stem the temptations of public life ; and if he 
cannot conquer, he may properly retreat. Some have little 
power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist 
evil. Many are weary of their conflicts with adversity, and 
are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them 
in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from 
the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the 
weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may 
repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of 
prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the 
mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not 
purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few asso- 
ciates serious as himself.” 

“ Such,” said Pekuah, “ has often been my wish, and I have 


9 6 


XASSELASr 


heard the princess declare, that she should not willingly die 
in a crowd.” 

“ The liberty of using harmless pleasure,” proceeded Imlac, 
“ will not be disputed ; but it is still to be examined what 
pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that 
Nekeyah can imagine is not in the act itself, but in its conse- 
quences. Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischiev- 
ous by endearing us to a state which we know to be transient 
and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of 
which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of 
which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortifica- 
tion is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use but that it 
disengages us from allurements of sense. In the state of 
future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure 
without danger, and security without restraint.” 

The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the as- 
tronomer, asked him, “ whether he could not delay her 
retreat by showing her something which she had not seen 
before ? ” 

“ Your curiosity,” said the sage, has been so general, and 
your pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not 
now very easily to be found ; but what you can no longer pro- 
cure from the living may be given by the dead. Among the 
wonders of this country are the Catacombs, or the ancient re- 
positories in which the bodies of the earliest generations were 
lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which embalmed 
them, they yet remain without corruption.” 

“ I know not,” said Rasselas, “ what pleasure the sight of 
the Catacombs can afford ; but, since nothing else is offered, 
I am resolved to view them, and shall place this with many 
other things which I have done because I would do some- 
thing.” 

They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited 
the Catacombs. When they were about to descend into the 
sepulchral caves, “ Pekuah,” said the princess, “ we are now 
again invading the habitations of the dead ; I know that you 
will stay behind ; let me find you safe when I return.” — “ No ; 
I will not be left,” answered Pekuah, “ I will go down between 
you and the prince.” 

They then all descended, and roved with wonder through 
the labyrinth of subterraneous passages, where the bodies 
were laid in rows on either side. 


RASSELAS. 


97 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 

IMLAC DISCOURSES ON THE NATURE OF THE SOUL. 

“ What reason,” said the prince, “ can be given why the 
Egyptians should thus expensively preserve those carcasses 
which some nations consume with fire, others .lay to mingle 
with the earth, and all agree to remove from their sight as 
soon as decent rites can be performed ? ” 

“ The original ancient custom/ said Imlac, “ is commonly 
unknown ; for the practice often continues when the cause has 
ceased ; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to 
conjecture ; for what reason did not dictate, reason cannot 
explain. I have long believed that the practice of embalming 
arose only from tenderness to the remains of relations or 
friends, and to this opinion I am more inclined because it 
seems impossible that this care should have been general ; 
had all the dead been embalmed, their repositories must in 
time have been more spacious than the dwelling of the living. 
I suppose only the rich or honorable were secured from cor- 
ruption, and the rest left to the course of nature. 

“ But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed 
the soul to live as long as the body continued undissolved, 
and therefore tried this method of eluding death.” 

“ Could the wise Egpytians,” said Nekeyah, “ think so 
grossly of the soul ? If the soul could once survive its sepa- 
ration, what could it afterwards receive or suffer from the 
body ? ” 

“ The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously,” said 
the astronomer, “ in the darkness of heathenism, and the first 
dawn of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed 
amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge : some yet 
say that it may be material, who nevertheless believe it to be 
immortal.” 

“ Some,” answered Imlac, “ have indeed said that the soul 
is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has 
thought it, who knew how to think ; for all the conclusions of 
reason enforce the immateriality of mind, and all the notices 
of sense and investigation of science concur to prove the un- 
consciousness of matter.” 

7 


RASSELAS. 


95 


“ It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in mat- 
ter, or that every particle is a thinking being. Yet, if any 
part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose 
to think ? Matter can differ from matter only in form, 
density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion : to which of 
these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be 
annexed ? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be 
great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or 
another, are modes of material existence, all equally alien 
from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once without 
thought, it can only be made to think by some new modifica- 
tion, but all the modifications which it can admit are equally 
unconnected with cogitative powers.” 

“ But the materialists,” said the astronomer, “ urge that 
matter may have qualities with which we are unacquainted.” 

“ He who will determine,” returned Imlac, “ against that 
which he knows, because there may be something which he 
knows not ; he that can set hypothetical possibility against 
acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among reason- 
able beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is 
inert, senseless, and lifeless ; and if this conviction cannot be 
opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we 
have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that 
which is known may be overruled by that which is unknown, 
no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty.” 

“ Yet let us not,” said the astronomer, “ too arrogantly 
limit the Creator’s power.” 

“ It is no limitation of omnipotence,” replied the poet, “ to 
suppose that one thing is not consistent with another, that the 
same proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the 
same number cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot 
be conferred on that which is created incapable of cogita- 
tion.” 

“ I know not,” said Nekeyah, “ any great use of this 
question. Does that immateriality, which, in my opinion, 
you have sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal 
duration ? ” 

“ Of immateriality,” said Imlac, “ our ideas are negative, 
and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a 
natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of ex- 
emption from all causes of decay : whatever perishes is de- 
stroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of 
its parts ; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts, 


XASSEL4S. 


99 


and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally corrupted 
or impaired.” 

“ I know not,” said Rasselas, “ how to conceive anything 
without extension ; what is extended must have parts, and 
you allow that whatever has parts may be destroyed.” 

“ Consider your own conceptions,” replied Imlac, “ and the 
difficulty will be less. You will find substance without exten- 
sion. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk : yet 
an ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain, when 
you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea of 
a pyramid than that the pyramid itself is standing. What 
space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea 
of a grain of corn ? or how can either idea suffer laceration ? 
As is the effect, such is the cause : as thought, such is the 
power that thinks ; a power impassive and indiscerptible.” 

“ But the Being,” said Nekeyah, “ whom I fear to name, 
the Being which made the soul, can destroy it.” 

“ He surely can destroy it,” answered Imlac, “since, how- 
ever unperishable, it receives from a superior nature its power 
of duration. That it will not perish by any inherent cause of 
decay, or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy ; 
but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be annihi- 
lated by him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher 
authority.” The whole assembly stood awhile silent and col- 
lected. “ Let us return,” said Rasselas, “ from this scene of 
mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead 
to him who did not know that he should never die, that what 
now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall 
think on forever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the 
wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember 
the shortness of our present state : they were, perhaps, snatch- 
ed away while they were busy like us in the choice of life.” 

“ To me,” said the princess, “ the choice of life is become 
less important ; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice 
of eternity.” 

They then hastened out of the caverns and under the pro- 
tection of their guard returned to Cairo. 


100 


RASSELAS . 


CHAPTER XLIX. 

THE CONCLUSION, IN WHICH NOTHING IS CONCLUDED, 

It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile : a few 
days after their visit to the Catacombs the river began to rise. 

They were confined to their house. The whole region being 
under water gave them no invitation to any excursions, and 
being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted 
themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life 
which they had observed, and with various schemes of happi- 
ness which each of them had formed. 

Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the 
convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the 
princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens, and to 
be made prioress of the order ; she was weary of expectation 
and disgust, and would gladly be fixed in some unvariable 
state. 

The princess thought, that of all sublunary things knowl- 
edge was the best : she desired first to learn all sciences, and 
then proposed to found a college of learned women, in which 
she would preside, that, by conversing with the old, and edu- 
cating the young, she might divide her time between the ac- 
quisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up for the 
next age, models of prudence, and patterns of piety. 

The prince desired a little kingdom, in which he might ad-, 
minister justice in his own person, and see all the parts of 
government with his own eyes ; but he could never fix the 
limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number 
of his subjects. 

Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven 
along the stream of life, without directing their course to any 
particular port. 

Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew that 
none could be obtained. They deliberated a while what was 
to be done, and resolved, when the inundation should cease, 
to return to Abyssinia. 


THE END 


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